Michigan established St. Joseph County in 1829. It was a fertile land with an abundance of fresh water supplied by the St. Joseph River. The county's colorful past is the result of forgotten locals and visitors. Hezekiah Thomas fished for diamonds in Corey Lake. Saloon smasher Carrie Nation sold miniature hatchets at the county fairgrounds. The United States Congress recognizes the village of Colon as the Magic Capital of the World, and Lakeside Cemetery is the final resting place of more magicians than any other cemetery on the globe. Author and historian Kelly Pucci digs into the entertaining and often overlooked history of St. Joseph County.

The changing world of the 1960s forced adaptation upon southern St. Joseph County, which was still trying to retain a rural identity in the towns of North Liberty, Walkerton, and Lakeville. By the decade's end, Studebakers had closed, and multigenerational family farms had been sold to accommodate the creation of Potato Creek State Park. The early 1980s brought further challenges for community leaders tasked with consolidating area schools to form the John Glenn School Corporation. Through all of this, the community retained its steadfast commitment to fellowship and local charm. Festivals, parades, church gatherings, and school activities reinforce what it means to be a Hoosier in southern St. Joseph County.

South Bend, Indiana stood at the crossroads of several major Native American trading routes long before the Europeans, led by the French, arrived from Canada and the East Coast to trade for furs. The city on a bend of the St. Joseph River soon became an important commercial center for settlers moving west. Eventually, the University of Notre Dame and Studebaker would call the growing community home.

City and Campus tells the rich history of a Midwest industrial town and its two academic institutions through the buildings that helped bring these places to life. John W. Stamper paints a narrative portrait of South Bend and the campuses of the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College from their founding and earliest settlement in the 1830s through the boom of the Roaring Twenties. Industrialist giants such as the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company and Oliver Chilled Plow Works invested their wealth into creating some of the city’s most important and historically significant buildings. Famous architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, brought the latest trends in architecture to the heart of South Bend. Stamper also illuminates how Notre Dame’s founder and long-time president Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., recruited other successful architects to craft in stone the foundations of the university and the college at the same time as he built the scholarship. City and Campus provides an engaging and definitive history of how this urban and academic environment emerged on the shores of the St. Joseph River.

LaWanda Cox is widely regarded as one of the most influential historians of Reconstruction and nineteenth-century race relations. Imaginative in conception, forcefully argued, and elegantly written, her work helped reshape historians' understanding of the age of emancipation. Freedom, Racism, and Reconstruction brings together Cox's most important writings spanning more than forty years, including previously published essays, excerpts from her books, and an unpublished essay. Now retired from Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Cox gave Donald G. Nieman her full cooperation on this project. The result is a cohesive book of refreshing and sophisticated analysis that illuminates a pivotal era in American history. It not only serves as a lasting testament to a highly original scholar but also makes available to readers a remarkable body of scholarship that remains required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the age of emancipation and the historian's craft.

It was a time in history when news and rumors could travel no faster than a trotting horse, yet Americans were keenly aware of the progress being made in the west. By the time the Erie Canal was open for business, wagons were ready to roll. With babies and belongings in hand, these soon-to-be pioneers bid a forever sort of goodbye to their homes and their loved ones. If what they'd heard was true, good things awaited them in the newly rebranded Michigan Territory. Particularly desirable was the White Pigeon Prairie, known for its breath-taking beauty and its plentiful resources of fresh water, fertile soil, and wild game. This book outlines the development of a community and follows the lives of some of the most interesting families to pass through the area. Whether they stayed for three years or for thirty, they left footprints that should not be swept away. The prairie that became the village was a vital part of Michigan's history that is little remembered today. As much as I hope the reader is entertained, I also hope to bring a renewed enthusiasm for exploring and preserving history, wherever you may be.