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Ethnography

Ethnography:
    Lives at Work

Work in America - Craftsmen - Farmers - Farm Workers - Law & Justice - Logging - Outlaws & Lives of Crime - Industrialization - Merchants, Peddlers & Traders - Miners, Pirates - Railroads & Transportation - Servants & Domestic Workers - Soldiers & Sailors - Teachers & Schools

WORKING IN AMERICA

Early America at work : a pictorial guide to our vanishing occupations / Everett Broomall.

973 WILSON 1963

Do you know what a peripatetic phrenologist is? The purpose of this book is to recall the old-time occupations and picture the people who did them.

CRAFTSMEN

The colonial craftsman / Carl Bridenbaugh

781.64079 FARM 2005

In colonial America, craftsmen comprised the largest segment of the population, after farmers. They were cabinetmakers, silversmiths, pewterers, printers, painters, engravers, blacksmiths, brass button-makers, shipwrights, hatters, shoemakers, and other artisans, and they manufactured the tools, clothing, household goods, and other essential products needed to sustain life and trade in the New World.
In this superb study, a distinguished American historian examines the lives and work of American craftsmen in the years before the Revolution — the golden age of colonial craftsmanship — showing them at work, at play, at worship, at school, at home, competing in their trades, striving to get ahead, and playing a dynamic role as citizens in bringing about American independence.
Natural resources, special crafts of the different colonies, and New World "marketing" of those crafts are closely studied. Students of American history, culture, and the arts and crafts will find this a richly rewarding study — authoritative, well-researched, and highly readable. It is further enhanced with carefully chosen illustrations from Diderot's Encyclopédie, the great 18th-century reference work on technology, whose detailed engravings accurately represent the crafts of the period.

FARMERS

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Farm Aid : a song for America / Dave Hoekstra

781.64079 FARM 2005

A celebration of Farm Aid's 20th anniversary. When Willie Nelson organized the first Farm Aid concert in 1985, he hoped it would be a one-time event that would ensure the continued survival of the national treasure upon which our country was founded: the independent family farmer. But two decades later, the nation is still losing an average of 330 family farms per week. And the annual Farm Aid concert, which has helped to raise more than $26 million to keep family farmers on their land, is now the longest running benefit concert in history. To commemorate this landmark and to call renewed attention to the importance of where, how, and by whom our food is produced, Farm Aid has put together this volume. Essays, interviews, poems, song lyrics, and fictional excerpts mix with more than 200 color and black-and-white photographs

FARM WORKERS

Fields of toil : a migrant family's journey Isabel. Valle

331.544 VALLE 1994

As a reporter on special assignment for the "Walla Walla Union-Bulletin," Isabel Valle spent an entire year with a migrant family, sharing domestic and other responsibilities. Every Sunday the newspaper published her award-winning, widely acclaimed reports on life with the Raul and Maria Elena Martinez family. As they resided and worked in the Inland Pacific Northwest and South Texas, Valle investigated topics such as the difficulties of asparagus cutting, drug smuggling and illegal aliens, chil

Fruit fields in my blood: Okie migrants in the west / Toby F. Sonneman

331.544 SONNEM 1992

College-educated spouses Sonneman and Steigmeyer rejected conventional careers to work for years as itinerant fruitpickers, beginning in the early 1970s. During that time, Sonneman's romantic notion of migrant life waned, but her respect for pickers' dignity and independence lasted, and this valuable book is the result. She terms "Okies" those pickers whose parents left Oklahoma and nearby states to follow the crops in the 1930s; she first relates that history. Though she sometimes weaves in her personal experiences awkwardly, Sonneman offers detailed accounts of migrants' lives, including their search for work and the rich but not-so-private sense of community in their trailer camps. Bosses still hold the cards, since legal and illegal immigrants will work for lower wages and ornery Okies resist organizing themselves into groups. Sonneman does not ignore the roles of sexism and fundamentalist religion, but she also defends migrants: her experiences lead her to argue against child labor laws with her liberal friends, and to explain how migrants feel stigmatized by shopkeepers and police. Steigmeyer's black-and-white photographs honestly and intimately portray the rugged existence of these people who self-mockingly called themselves "fruit tramps." 

LAW & JUSTICE

LOGGING

Deadfall : generations of logging in the Pacific Northwest / James LeMonds

634.9809 LEMONDS 2000

Through the life stories of the author's grandfathers, father, uncles, and cousins, Deadfall documents the dramatic changes in the logging industry since the early 1900s. The book focuses on the influence of international timber giant Weyerhaeuser Company in the Pacific Northwest, yet its themes resonate from Alaska to the American Southeast--wherever timber is king. While spurning nostalgia for logging's glory days, Deadfall attempts to view a future for today's timber workers.

Never chop your rope : a story of British Columbia logging and the people who logged / Joe Garner

971.103 GARNER 1988

 

Memoirs of a logger / Alfred William Moltke

979.7 MOLTKE 1965

Memoirs of Washington State logger, Alfred William Moltke.

Swivel-chair logger : the life and work of Anton A. "Tony" Lausmann / Bert Webber

979.5042 WEBBER 1976

The story of Anton A. "Tony" Lausmann b. 1899 who became one of the chief and most beloved "Timber Barons" of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

OUTLAWS & LIVES OF CRIME

INDUSTRIALIZATION

 

MERCHANTS, PEDDLERS & TRADERS

 

The Yankee peddlers of early America / J. R. Dolan

973.2 DOLAN 1964

Today, "peddler" has an unpleasant connotation, but the Yankee peddlers of early America were more than street hawkers. Enterprising, shrewd, and endearing, they were the ancestors of the nineteenth-century tycoon and the twentieth-century businessman. With over 100 illustrations and black-and-white photographs.

MINERS

The Butte Irish : class and ethnicity in an American mining town, 1875-1925 / David M. Emmons

978.668 EMMONS 1989

A social history of the Irish in Butte, Montana which provides a revealing look of such significant issues as class formation and immigrant assimilation, community building, intergenerational differences and cultural values.

PIRATES

 

The pirate hunter : the true story of Captain Kidd / Richard. Zacks

BIOG KIDD

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. Over the centuries, novelists, treasure hunters, and even historians have stoked his legend. But it turns out that most everyone, even respected scholars, have the story all wrong. Captain William Kidd was no career cutthroat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain, a privateer, who was hired to chase pirates. In 1696, he set out in a lone ship with a mutinous crew, heading 4,000 miles round the tip of Africa to track down a handful of vicious pirates led by one Robert Culliford and bring back their treasure to the governor of New York. At the end of the journey, one man would hang and the other would walk away. Through painstaking research, author Richard Zacks has pieced together the never-before-told story, an authentic pirate story for grownups.--From publisher description. 

Under the black flag : the romance and the reality of life among the pirates / David Cordingly

910.453 CORDING 2006

David Cordingly reveals the truth behind the pirate legends of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Sir Francis Drake, the fierce female brigands Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and others who rode and robbed upon the world's most dangerous waters. Here are the weapons they used, the ships they sailed, and the ways they fought -- and were defeated. This book also charts the paths of fictional pirates such as Captain Hook and Long John Silver. 

RAILROAD & TRANSPORTATION

The mule men : a history of stock packing in the Sierra Nevada / Louise A. Jackson

979.44 JACKSON 2004

In The Mule Men: A History of Stock Packing in the Sierra Nevada, Louise A. Jackson takes us inside the adventure, hardships, and joys peculiar to the packing trade. The book covers two hundred years, from the 1750s to the 1950s. The physical area is the southern Sierra Nevada, the backcountry containing most of California's wilderness and national park lands. From Yosemite to the Tehachapis, the Tuolumne River to the Kern, these lands above and beyond any major roadways are the wild areas where the majority of the modern Sierra packers have plied their trade.

Nothing like it in the world : the men who built the transcontinental railroad, 1863-1869 / Stephen E. Ambrose

385.0973 AMBROSE 2000

Nothing Like It in the World gives the account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage. It is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad—the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks

This was railroading. / George B. Abdill

385.09795 ABDILL 1958

This Was Railroading: An Historical Collection of Rare Photos and True Stories About The Tracks, Trains and Trainmen including Northern California by George B. Abdill

RANCHING

This was sheep ranching : yesterday and today / Virginia Paul

636.39 PAUL 1976

A readable account of sheep raising, from their domestication in ancient times through the centuries to present day sheep ranching. Filled with photographs including lambing, shearings in different places and different eras, flocks on summer ranges, nomadic bedouins eternally roaming for the best grazing lands, and even Kit Carson who once trailed 12,000 sheep from New Mexico to California and didn't care for it one bit. Ms. Paul carries us through the introduction of sheep to England, Europe, Russia, and the eventual spread to the U.S. West. Exploring past and present contributions of sheep to humanity's comfort and well being (everything from lamb chops to high fashion wool suits) we realize that we owe these creatures (and those who raise them) a vote of thanks.

SERVANTS & DOMESTIC WORKERS

Doméstica : immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence Pierrette / Hondagneu-Sotelo

331.4816 HONDAGN 2007

In this enlightening and timely work, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo highlights the voices, experiences, and views of Mexican and Central American women who care for other people's children and homes, as well as the outlooks of the women who employ them in Los Angeles. The new preface looks at the current issues facing immigrant domestic workers in a global context.

Seven days a week : women and domestic service in industrializing America David M. Katzman

331.4097 KATZMAN 1978

First person accounts  of life as an American servant at the turn of the century.

SOLDIERS & SAILORS

Two years in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans and China, being a journal of every day life on board ship, interesting information in regard to the inhabitants of different countries, and the exciting events peculiar to a whaling voyage / James F. Munger

910.45 M966t

This journal is James Munger's only book and ironically when this 22 year old boy was drowned off Florida he did not know that he had written a book. Captain Barber, master of the ship the Annie Bucknam, took Munger's journal and a few personal effects back to New York where they were delivered to his father, William Munger.

Thank you for your service / David Finkel

362.8609 FINKEL 2013

"From a MacArthur Fellow and the author of The Good Soldiers, a profound look at life after war No journalist has reckoned with the psychology of war as intimately as David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they carried out the infamous surge, a grueling fifteen-month tour that changed all of them forever. Now Finkel has followed many of those same men as they've returned home and struggled to reintegrate--both into their family lives and into American society at large. In the ironically named Thank You for Your Service, Finkel writes with tremendous compassion not just about the soldiers but about their wives and children. Where do soldiers belong after their homecoming? Is it possible, or even reasonable, to expect them to rejoin their communities as if nothing has happened? And in moments of hardship, who are soldiers expected to turn to if they feel alienated by the world they once lived in? 

The United States Cavalry : an illustrated history, 1776-1944 / Gregory J. W. Urwin

973.0048 URWIN 2003

With color and verve, Gregory J. W. Urwin presents the history of the mounted forces of the United States. He combines combat reports, personality profiles, and political and social overviews to present a complete picture of a bygone era extending from the Revolutionary War well into the twentieth century. For more than a century, the U.S. Cavalry played a prominent role in American military conflicts, serving as both a frontier police force and as a major combat arm in the republic's conventional wars. 

TEACHERS & SCHOOLS

Frontier teachers : stories of heroic women of the old West Chris Enss

973.0048 URWIN 2003

Between 1847 and 1858, more than 600 women teachers traveled across the untamed frontier to provide youngsters with an education, and the numbers grew rapidly in the decades to come, as women took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for respectable work for ladies of the era. Enduring hardship, the dozen women whose stories are movingly told in the pages of Frontier Teachers demonstrated the utmost dedication and sacrifice necessary to bring formal education to the Wild West. As immortalized in works of art and literature, for many students their women teachers were heroic figures who introduced them to a world of possibilities―and changed America forever.

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