New Book Releases

Located along the west bank of the Willamette River at the falls in Oregon, the West Linn area offers a vibrant and interesting array of geological history, including ice age floods and the Willamette Meteorite. It is a significant historic site for Native Americans because of fishing and trading at the falls, and it was a settling place for early pioneers at the end of the Oregon Trail. It was known as an important hub of the paper and electric production industry.

The West Linn Historical Society has been sharing “History Without Walls” since 2014.

Arthur Gaulker, a successful real estate scion, gathered investors to create Electric Amusement Park in 1906. Gaulker's park was located near the Belle Isle Bridge just a few miles from downtown Detroit. Morris Wolff opened his Wolff's Park in 1906 directly across the street from Electric Park. Both parks spent lavishly and went bankrupt within a few years; however, other parks replaced them. By 1927, city officials had grown tired of the noise and widespread gambling, so they closed down the parks. Eastwood Park, Jefferson Beach Amusement Park, Edgewater Park, Walled Lake Park, and Bob Lo Park filled the void for years. Big bands got the parks through the Depression, multiple wars, and an onslaught of televised entertainment. However, costly fires, local opposition, and corporate competition became too much for the local parks, most of which were family-owned. Bob Lo Park, which closed in 1993, was the last to go out of business.

Brooklyn, New York, is home to the Brooklyn Public Library, the fifth-largest library system in the United States, with 60 neighborhood branches serving the 2.5 million residents of the borough. The Central Library--the main hub of this far-reaching institution--has, for 75 years, occupied a prime triangle of land at Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza. Originally proposed in 1888, the unique Art Deco building with an "open book" design was not completed until 53 years later in 1941. Since then, the library has seen millions of eager readers pass through its iconic gilded doorway. While the technologies of learning have changed dramatically in the years since the Central Library opened, the mission of the institution remains the same--to ensure the preservation and transmission of society's knowledge, history, and culture, and to provide the people of Brooklyn with free and open access to information for education, recreation, and reference.

The quaint, one-room schoolhouse of the untamed frontier looms large in the collective image of the American West. The stories that surround these schoolhouses have become embedded in the nation's cultural memory: the hardships of having to walk miles to and from school, the often cramped quarters within, and the harsh lessons learned at the hand--or ruler--of the teacher. More often than not, these stories are told with a sense of nostalgia for the bygone era of rural education. This book explores the myths and realities of these iconic buildings in one rural county in California. Although this volume focuses on just a single region, the important role these schools played in the lives of those they served (or did not serve) speaks to the wider influence of schools and education throughout early California.