If fire ever ravages Glenda Jackson's Ventura home, she'll grab her 1895 Dolly Madison rosewood mahogany parlor chair and her 1906 upright Bush & Gertz solid cherry wood piano.

Judy Garland as a smiling little girl among her schoolmates, cowboys on horseback outside a saloon and railroad workers in a rare snowfall populate a new photo book on Lancaster's history.

Perhaps more than any other holiday Thanksgiving is a time to embrace traditions. Many of use keep the same routines for years, even decades on this day. My own Thanksgiving tradition has changed very slightly in my life. A couple of places, a few names, but Thanksgiving still has the same feel that it did to me thirty years ago when I was a kid.

'I didn't know baseball started so early on the West Coast. You have a reference to it being played in California during the late 1850s." I'm talking to Bill Swank, 64, about his latest book, Baseball in San Diego: From the Plaza to the Padres. Swank was a San Diego County probation officer for 31 years, retired in 1994. He has written or cowritten five San Diego--centered baseball books. He's married and the father of three grown children.

Longtime Columbus residents, particularly those living in and around German Village and the South Side, will find much to enjoy in the latest release in the "Images of America" series, German Columbus (Arcadia Publishing, 128 pages, $19.99) by Jeffrey T. Darbee and Nancy A. Recchie.

The Massachusetts Audubon Society began as the idea of two Back Bay women in 1896 who were talking about their dislike of dead birds displayed on ladies' hats over tea one day. Thinking it was a cruel practice, the two women discussed how nice it would be to have a place where birds could live in a protected environment.

Newly published for the nationwide series “Images of America,” (Arcadia Publishing, $19.99 each) are two Virginia history books by author Dale Paige Talley, “Hanover County” and “Ashland.”

Eloise. The mere mention of the name can send shivers down the spines of any who grew up in the southeastern Michigan era. The dark, brooding, mental asylum stood poised at the corner of Merriman Rd. And Michigan Ave. for decades inciting myths and legends about what went on behind those walls.

Riverside author Steve Lech has taken his passion for history and written "Riverside in Vintage Postcards" (Arcadia Publishing, $19.99). A part of Arcadia's Postcard History series, the book shares more than 200 postcards from the region, dating from 1900 to 1930, showing the origins and development of Riverside.

In October 1954, the Philadelphia Athletics relocated to Kansas City, putting an end to more than a half-century of American League baseball in the City of Brotherly Love. However, of all the professional sports teams ever to play in the city, Connie Mack’s Athletics remain the most successful—and frustrating.

Arcadia Publishing offered Baseball Almanac the opportunity to review Baseball in Toledo by John Husman earlier this year. To be completely honest, we were not that excited about the opportunity, but a free book is a free book. When the one-hundred twenty-eight page book arrived, we were at least happy that it would not take long to complete the review. Baseball Almanac was as wrong as wrong could be. Virtually every single page of this well written guide told the rich history of baseball in Toledo through pictures — each of which has detailed captions.

Professional baseball teams in Toledo, Ohio, were first known as the Mud Hens—for the local marsh birds—more than a century ago. About a dozen other team names have been used over the course of 106 seasons dating back to the first in 1883.

Michigan and Trumbull was the address for professional baseball in Detroit for 104 seasons. From 1896 when Bennett Park opened, until the last game at Tiger Stadium in 1999, Michigan and Trumbull was the most famous street corner in Michigan.

In the spring of 1865, the first spring after the end of the Civil War, three baseball clubs were founded in downtown Columbus. This local enthusiasm for the game reflected the national trend during the post-war era, when baseball, or “base ball” as it was called, was spreading rapidly throughout the United States.

Victory Field, built in 1996 as home to the Indianapolis Indians, is considered by many today as the best minor league ballpark in the nation. But baseball has deeper roots in the Circle City, as fans of the Tribe will discover in the pages of Baseball in Indianapolis, which tells the story of the American pastime in the state capitol from the post-Civil War era up to the present day.

Bridgeport, Connecticut, owns a rich and diverse baseball history. People from varied backgrounds stepped up to the plate in Bridgeport’s early years—sons of Irish immigrants, laborers and merchants, Asian and Latino players, and some of the first African Americans to play professional ball. Local baseball truly blossomed with “Orator” Jim O’Rourke, who returned from the big leagues and organized the Connecticut State Baseball League in 1895.

If there was ever a place in America where a city and its baseball team were as close as family, it was Brooklyn. The legacy of this relationship comes down to us in stories of childhoods spent at Ebbets Field and in the stories of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, whose courage changed the face of America.

A walk through Manhattan’s Financial District and even the district’s name identifies what is central to this neighborhood: the skyscrapers, construction in and around the site of the former World Trade Center, people in suits hurrying down Wall St.

Historian, author, and Mississippi Delta native William Bearden brings hundreds of years of cotton cultivation into breathtaking historical context with Cotton: From Southern Fields to the Memphis Market.

Nobody rained on his parade for 10 years. This is the story of one aspect of the spirited life of Servite Father Clarence M. Brissette, national director of the Sorrowful Mother Novena at our Lady of Sorrows Church (now a Basilica). Back in 1948 he edited its weekly little magazine, "Novena Notes," and must have had a mind like Bill Veeck's

WITH NATIONAL monuments, museums and historical moments dominating life in Washington, D.C., the city’s gay population is sometimes overlooked. But a South Carolina-based publishing house that specializes in documenting key details about cities and towns nationwide is helping change this.

While on duty, Duquesne police Sgt. Daniel J. Burns was often approached by people about the crimes, buildings and people of the city's colorful past.

John Weldon Scott and Eric Ledell Smith will be at the autograph table at noon Saturday at Barnes &Noble Booksellers in the Camp Hill Shopping Mall to sign their book, "African-Americans of Harrisburg" (Arcadia Publishing, $19.99).

If all goes according to schedule, by Christmas residents of this area may be able to buy a book of historical photos with captions from five towns located in the Ossipee Valley. On April 28, the president of each town’s historical society signed a book contract, with Arcadia Publishing of Portsmouth N.H., at the Limerick Library.

On Sunday, 5/1/05, Dr. Carolyn Smeltzer, Dr. Fran Vlasses and Connie R. Robinson were the Recipient of the eleventh annual Saint Peregrine Healing Award.

Despite its industrial reputation, Detroit features many fine examples of the 1920s architectural style of Art Deco or "The Modern Style." Savage, a memeber of the Detroit Area Art Deco Society, and Kowalski, a local journalist/historian, have compiled photographs of, and comment on, exceptional structures including skyscrapers (e.g., the famous Fisher Building), homes, theaters, and churches. They conclude with lessons for preservation.

Professors at local, unspecified colleges discuss how Chicagonians participated in the homefront war effort, and also examine changes to the city in the postwar years. Archival photos from such sources as the Chicago Sun Times, City of Chicago, and University of Illinois feature various ethic groups and women as well as men contributing to the war effort. The book concludes with an overview of the postwar era (1955-2003) under Mayors Richard J. and Richard M. Daley.

Rodriguez, a humanities librarian at Michigan State U., presents archival photos, maps, and other images that tell the story of the industrial roots of Lansing, where Ransom Eli Olds brought his father's motor shop to national prominence first with advancements in gasoline and steam engines and then with horseless carriages.

Photographs illustrate the work and life of people in the Corps, a Depression-era initiative to reduce unemployment by putting people to work on conservation projects.

Douglas Deuchler, our own local treasure, has another book on the market. His second book with the Arcadia label is on the town of Maywood.