Customer Reviews (2)

A grateful "Climax kid"!
This book looked like it would be dry and somewhat "technical", but I picked it up dutifully and began to read....and was never, ever bored.I ate it up and only wish that my dad were still hear to talk it over with, to get even more "insider" stories and memories.When your dad goes to work each day when you're young, you kind of take it for granted no matter what he does.Now I realize how special the whole experience was.We grew up in beautiful scenic splendor in a historic town supported by a mine with such historical and modern significance....it was really SOMETHING!

Living in Minnesota, a person misses hearing some of those old terms:muck crew, hangup man (that's my dad!), long change, Glory Hole...it's just music to my ears.

Hats off to all the men that worked underground to provide for their families...we thank you and we thank Stephen Voynick for telling their stories and the story of the Hill to us.

Mining History
Being a Colorado native and especially a native of Leadville, I found this book fascinating reading. Mr. Voynick does an excellent job of telling the story of the Climax mine from its' earliest days. Even for people who are not natives of Colorado but are interested in the mountains or mining or blue collar life in a company town the book offers many insights. ... Read more

Product Description
Addresses lingering questions about government resettlement of Native Canadians and its impact on their lives. ... Read more

Product Description
This history, which focuses on the economic and social history of Iowa, aims to prove that the location of this heartland state has a significant effect on the identity of its inhabitants. It takes the reader from 17th-century Native American habitation, to the sesqui-centennial in 1996. ... Read more

Product Description
The color, drama, and ingenuity of Woodland Indian culture,with special emphasis on the Wisconsin Chippewa, are well demonstrated inthis solid and richly illustrated treatment of their life course, socialorganization, material culture, religious and ceremonial life, curativetechniques, games, music and folklore. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A must for learning about daily life
The book reads quickly and gives you tremendous insight into the mores and customs of these native americans.If you wish to learn more about the Great Lakes indian way of life, this is the book for you. ... Read more

Product Description
When prize-winning journalist and avid scuba diver Michael Cottman participated in an underwater expedition to survey the sunken wreck of a slave ship off the coast of Florida, he was overwhelmed by powerful feelings of kinship and oneness with his African ancestors. As he held in his hands the very shackles that had bound hundreds of men, women, and children in their tortured passage from their African homeland to America, Michael Cottman became determined to tell their stories and the story behind the ship that had carried them away from all they knew and loved.
        
Spirit Dive takes readers back three centuries and to three continents in order to trace the complex and moving story of the slaves and the slavers. We travel to England on the trail of the shipbuilders and the captain and his crew; to Goree Island, located off the westernmost extension of the African continent near Dakar, where the ship almost certainly docked and from which its enslaved passengers would have gotten their last view of their homeland; and to the Caribbean, where the Henrietta Marie sank without a trace--until its recent rediscovery gave us a tangible key to one of history's most terrible episodes.
        
Spirit Dive is a powerful and compelling testament of one man's attempt to make sense of the history of his ancestors, chronicling his journey while confronting questions with no answers and striving for reconciliation with his homeland's past and his own country's future.Amazon.com Review
For most Afro-Americans, the slave ship was the vessel that ushered their unwilling ancestors from their homeland to the New World. That is why Michael Cottman's Spirit Dive resonates with such horror and history, as he uncovers the sordid tale of the Henrietta Marie, which sailed from London to West Africa and on to America, where it sank off the coast of Key West in 1700. In an emotional narrative that combines scuba diving; American, Caribbean, and African history; and underwater archeology, Cottman's descriptions of the ship's discovery, the horrible instruments of bondage the Africans were forced to endure, and the soul-killing greed that dehumanized the Europeans who participated in this hellish "business" make Spirit Dive an unforgettable read. "I needed to know about the man who had captained the Henrietta Marie," Cottman writes. "The ironmongers who had manufactured the shackles for the ship; the crewmen who had set the sails and helped navigate the 120-ton vessel from London to Africa; the deckhands who had enslaved the Africans as part of their daily duties, men who had showed no remorse in senselessly slaughtering rebellious human beings in the time it takes to think." --Eugene Holley Jr. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Shackles
The author notes that as a ten year old in Detroit he loved the program SEA HUNT.Scuba diving led to a journey to uncover a slave ship's past.The book opens with a timeline of events significant to the operation of the HENRIETTA MARIE.

Mel Fisher is probably the most well known treasure hunter in the world.Moe Molinar, a successful black treasure hunter, found the shackles.Additional diving in 1973 produced more rusted shackles.They were stored in a warehouse in Key West.The first artifact identifying the wreck was a bell inscribed HENRIETTA MARIE, 1699.This was discovered by David Moore, an archeologist, in the Gulf of Mexico.

The author conducted research at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.David Moore and the author were haunted by the one hundred shackles found in the wreck of the HENRIETTA MARIE.Their presence showed without a doubt the ship's purpose.The author had been taught by his mother to use the story of slavery for inspiration.

On its second slave voyage, and what proved to be its last, two hundred fifty Africans began the trip.Landfall after the Middle Passage was a location in Jamaica, Port Royal, where the African people were sold for three thousand one hundred forty four pounds.In the Florida straits the HENRIETTA MARIE was blindsided by strong winds.The ship sank thirty seven miles west of Key West.

In Jamaica Michael Cottman, the author, may have met descendants of the people transported on the HENRIETTA MARIE.They had the same surname as a family of Jamaican plantation owners and English manufacturers of the cannon installed on the HENRIETTA MARIE.The meeting in Jamaica occurred after four years of research.

In 1992 Michael Cottman attended his first national conference of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers.It was the organization's second national meeting.Safe diving practice means sticking to a buddy system.The association of black divers grew out of the need to obtain partners to follow the sport of scuba diving.

The dive to the HENRIETTA MARIE was undertaken in May, 1993.It was quite an accomplishment to find the wreck after an absence of nine years; sand shifts, currents move and displace objects.Visibility underwater is frequently poor.Having located the wreck of the slave ship the HENRIETTA MARIEon New Ground Reef, the divers paid tribute to those ancestors and others who lost their lives during the Middle Passage.The dive was a sort of pilgrimage.

In 1996 Cottman went to Dakar, to Goree Island.Historians believe the HENRIETTA MARIE once sailed along the West Coast of Africa.In 1996 since there were severe problems in Nigeria, Cottman elected to travel to Senegal.Michael Cottman and his guide went to a structure named the House of Slaves.Goree Island was a place of mass suffering and tormented souls.

The book is moving.The terrible wound inflicted, slavery, needs to be discussed in this country.There is a Holocaust Museum memorializing a European event.No museum memorializes the peculiar institution.

An enjoyable and informative read
I have always wanted to visit the Motherland, but never more than after reading Michael Cottman's "Spirit Dive." I thoroughly enjoyed his rich descriptions of the people and places he encountered there on hisquest, especially his visit to the Door of No Return on Goree Island andscuba diving the clear water off the west African coast. I enjoyed thepassages about scuba diving--the kinship between the black divers, theadventures of the underwater treasure hunters, Cottman's encounters withplayful schools of fish and no-so-playful sharks. I also found impressivethe detail the book included of the workings of the slave trade from abusiness perspective--the way the enslavers were so single-minded in theirgreed that they completely disregarded the value of black life. I willnever forget the image of the tiny shackles imprisoning babies--it wasdisturbing but richly described. I found it difficult to put "SpiritDive" down and have shared it with my young son, nephews, nieces andseveral friends. So many of the stories about slavery and the struggle ofour forebearers are written in a disconnected way. This book was a warm andpersonal account of a journalist and father's search for truth about hisheritage.

Great Book To Read
I really enjoyed reading Spirit Dive. I found it very interesting, inspiring and informative. It was an excellent way to learn about slavery without feeling depressed. I liked the idea of weaving one man's personalexperience with the history of one slave ship. The book made me laugh andcry. But it gave me a new way of thinking regarding the issue of slavery - African Americans survived slavery and continue to be a strong race ofpeople.

Spirit Lifting
The account of the discovery of this slave ship and the painstaking research that went into telling us its history is inspiring. Cottman writes it in a spiritually uplifting and journalistically compelling manner. EveryAmerican should read it and share it with every child they know.

Diving into the Past
It's not often that a book successfully makes the link between contemporary man and the past. Spirit Dive by Michael H. Cottman is a notable exception.

Cottman's journey back through time to research thehistory of a slave ship is an eye-opening work, rich with details about theoperation of the slave trade, the risks and the lucrative payoffs for theslavers, which helps to explain why it became a major industry.

It's alsoa story of how contemporary men -- black and white -- came together todocument an accurate history of an event that was a perfect example ofscenes that were played out repeatedly as slave ships traversed theAtlantic.

It was a perfect circle in many ways. Slavery drove white andblack apart over an uncommon evil, but hundreds of years later, the searchfor the slave ship brought black and white together for a common good. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
"The entrance of Native Americans into the world of cultural resources management is forcing a change in the traditional paradigms that have guided archaeologists, anthropologists, and other CRM professionals. This book examines these developments from tribal perspectives, and articulates native views on the identification of cultural resources, how they should be handled and by whom, and what their meaning is in contemporary life. Stapp and Burney also demonstrate the connections between cultural resources and other contemporary issues such as native sovereignty, economic development, human rights, and cultural integrity. Sponsored by the Heritage Resources Management Program, University of Nevada, Reno" ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

Product Description
A collection of essays summarizing current knowledge of southeastern Native Americans during the colonial encounter (post 1500). Integrates archaeological, documentary, and ethno-historical evidence in the most comprehensive examination of diverse southe astern Indian cultures published in decades. The Timucua, Guale, Apalachee, Chickasaw, Caddo, Natchez, Quapaw, Cherokee, Upper and Lower Creek, and Seminole tribes are each considered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Proto-historical Indian Tribes
This is a collection of essays by archaelogists about the Indian societies that inhabited the southeastern United States from about 1500 to 1700.One chapter each is devoted to the Timucua, Guale, Apalachee, Chickasaws, Caddos, Natchez, Quapaw, Cherokee, Upper Creeks, Lower Creeks, and Seminole.

Much of the writing is opaque professorial prose, but the editor reins in the contributors and they generally stay focused on the subject (Indians) rather than embarking on flights of fancy on pet subjects such as "productive intensification" or "diachronic perspective." If you are interested in what the Indians of the southeastern U.S. were like just before or just after their first contacts with Europeans then this is a good book to read.

The most enigmatic paragraph in the book is titled "Editor's Note."In it the editor blandly explains that the most contentious topic in her editing was the use of tribal names in singular or plural form, pointing out that the correct practice "is to use the ethnological singular to indicate plural members of native tribes."She apologizes for any offense that may be given native peoples by departures from this rule.Is this a ponderous joke dressed up in academically correct language? I think it is -- and I applaud the editor's humour, if such is intended. In any case, the Timucua will forgive her as they have been extinct for 300 years. ... Read more

Product Description
This regional study examines the declining fortunes of Freiburg, a craft town on the Upper Rhine, and its relations with the surrounding Breisgau village communities. Here, Scott uses historical and economic geography to examine the town and surrounding villages as a totality rather than as isolated independent communities, focusing on the troubled period from 1450 to 1530 when the territorial expansion of Freiburg threatened the surrounding Breisgau villages and pitted burgher against peasant in a struggle for economic and political survival. ... Read more

Product Description
The first book to document the maritime history of the port city Muskegon combining historical detail and good storytelling. ... Read more

Product Description
Looking Both Ways is an extraordinary introduction to the indigenous people and vital culture of Alaska's south central coast. Combining archaeology, history, and oral tradition, it traces the Alutiiq path through ancestral generations to contemporary life, including today's compelling issues of cultural identity and autonomy. The Alutiiq art, objects, and images featured are signposts along the way. Diversity is one of the signal points of the text: no one voice could tell the whole story, and no single approach defines what it truly means to be Alutiiq. The many contributors range over Alutiiq relations with neighbouring Alaska Native peoples and with non-Native colonisers, with the sea and land, with place and time, with animals and spirits. Alutiiq writers, elders, and storytellers convey a many-sided sense of cultural values and beliefs, even as they recall the struggle to survive more than two centuries of Russian and Euro American domination. From anthropologists and historians come insights into the great originality of Alutiiq culture as well as its debt to formative influences from around the North Pacific.Seen from these many perspectives, Alutiiq identity emerges as a rich mosaic of people, location, and experience. This volume was created by the shared efforts of Alutiiq communities, scholars, and museums, led by the Smithsonian Institution and the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak, Alaska. This is a story in itself, reflecting national trends toward greater Native American participation in cultural research and self-representation in the museum world. The book accompanies an exhibit opening at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, in June 2001 and travelling to Kodiak, Homer, Anchorage, Juneau, and Seattle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Could they be any more inspecific?
In some respects, like photos of traditional items, I really liked this book. But, it is a book written by this group of people about the group. That leads to biases. Read it, but then read some books about them that aren't written by them. Then you'll have a good feel for the group. Since it's a collaboration of writers, there are too many sensibilities that had to be taken into consideration, so it is watered down by trying to please everyone. Sometimes it's so watered down, it doesn't say anything for whole pages. For instance, the beginning pages about their origin has so many origins in it you'd think they were either the mother of all Alaskan Native people or that they married into so many groups that they are made up of everyone. (They do have many customs that are similar to many groups, but I'd like to know why they don't believe they are related to the Yup'ik and Inupiat, when they speak their language and have similar genetics? What's up with that?) However, it's still a good start, and the personal subsistance stories are great. What amazing lives they lived! Just remember its written by them about them. DDD ... Read more

Product Description
Spanning the period between Spanish colonization and the early twentieth century, this well-argued and convincing study examines the histories of Spanish and American conquests, and of ethnicity, race, and community in southern California. Lisbeth Haas draws on a diverse body of source materials (mission and court archives, oral histories, Spanish language plays, census and tax records) to build a new picture of rural society and social change.
A borderlands and Chicano history, Haas's work provides a richly textured study of events that took place in and around San Juan Capistrano and Santa Ana in present-day Orange County. She provides a vivid sense of how and why the past acquires meaning in the lives that make up the historical identities she discusses. The voices of Juaneño and Luiseño Indians, Californios, and Mexicans are heard along the shifting faultlines of economic, social, and political change.
This is one of the first truly multiethnic histories of California and of the West. It makes clear that issues of multiculturalism and ethnicity are not recent manifestations in California--they have characterized social and cultural relationships there since the late eighteenth century. ... Read more

Product Description
In certain neighborhoods of New York City, an immigrant may live out his or her entire life without even becoming fluent in English. From the Russians of Brooklyn's Brighton Beach to the Dominicans of Manhattan's Washington Heights, New York is arguably the most ethnically diverse city in the world. Yet no wide-ranging ethnic history of the city has ever been attempted.
In All the Nations Under Heaven, Frederick Binder and David Reimers trace the shifting tides of New York's ethnic past, from its beginnings as a Dutch trading outpost to the present age where Third World immigration has given the population a truly global character. All the Nations Under Heaven explores the processes of cultural adaptation to life in New York, giving a lively account of immigrants new and old, and of the streets and neighborhoods they claimed and transformed.
All the Nations Under Heaven provides a comprehensive look at the unique cultural identities that have wrought changes on the city over nearly four centuries since Europeans first landed on the Atlantic shore. While detailing the various efforts to retain a cultural heritage, the book also looks at how ethnic and racial groups have interacted -and clashed -over the years.
From the influx of Irish and Germans in the nineteenth century to the recent arrival of Caribbean and Asian ethnic groups in large numbers, All the Nations Under Heaven explores the social, cultural, political, and economic lives of immigrants as they sought to form their own communities and struggled to define their identities within the grwonig heterogeneity of New York. In this timely, provocative book, Binder and Reimers offer insight into the cultural mosaic of New York at the turn of the millennium, where despite a civic pride that emphasizes the goals of diversity and tolerance, racial and ethnic conflict continue to shatter visions of peaceful coexistence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An immigrant history of New York City
I read this book as part of a graduate course on the history of New York City atLong Island University in Brooklyn, N.Y. This book tries to include brief and factual history of all of N.Y.'s immigrant groups. It also covers the various waves of immigration. A good book for a multicultural perspective on New York City.

Informative account of New York City Immigration
In this extremely well-researched book, Reimers and Binder attempt a taskof Herculean difficulty: condensing over three centuries of New York City'simmigration history into a 330 page book. Despite the inevitableshortcomings, their work puts forth a cohesive synthesis of the immigrantstruggle in a bustling metropolis. Beginning with the Dutch settlements ofthe 1620's and ending with a general commentary on the state of NYCimmigration in the present, the authors chronicle a tale of generalstability in the face of internal fluctuation. Reading this book, one can'thelp but remember the old adage--the more things change, the more they staythe same--and the description fits the story of NYC immigration perfectly.Cyclical in nature, the history of New York's immigration is one of hardlabor, (geographic)displacement of a previous immigrant group and a generalassimilation of culture--usually in that order. Professors Reimers andBinder show us that although the face of New York City immigration mayperiodically change, the immigrant struggles and reality of urban lifenever do. ... Read more

Product Description

The First Nations who have lived in the Great Lakes watershed have been strongly influenced by the imposition of colonial and national boundaries there. The essays in Lines Drawn upon the Water examine the impact of the Canadian—American border on communities, with reference to national efforts to enforce the boundary and the determination of local groups to pursue their interests and define themselves. Although both governments regard the border as clearly defined, local communities continue to contest the artificial divisions imposed by the international boundary and define spatial and human relationships in the borderlands in their own terms.