Bøger af Stew Magnuson

Descending 1,885 miles straight down the center of the United States from Westhope, North Dakota, to Brownsville, Texas, is U.S. 83, one of the oldest and longest of the federal highways that hasn't been replaced by an Interstate. Award-winning author Stew Magnuson takes readers on a trip down the road and through the history of the Northern Great Plains. The famous and the forgotten are found in stories he discovers in the Dakotas. Explorers Pierre de la Vérendrye, Lewis & Clark, Jedediah Smith, are all encountered along with Chief Spotted Tail of the Brulé Lakotas, TV sensation Lawrence Welk and rodeo superstar Casey Tibbs. The murderers, settlers, ballplayers and rail barons from yesteryear meet today's truckers, oil rig workers and ghost towns inhabitants as Magnuson launches his own Voyage of Discovery in a beat-up 1999 Mazda Protégé. Published on the 125th anniversary of the year North Dakota and South Dakota became states, The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, is a love poem to the natural beauty of the prairie and the fascinating people-both past and present-found along the road.

On the night of Feb. 27, 1973, beat-up cars carrying dozens of angry young men sped into Wounded Knee village. Members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and local Lakotas had come to occupy the symbolic site on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the army had massacred Chief Big Foot and his people in 1890. They would hold out against the firepower of the U.S. government for 71 days. By the time the occupiers left, the village had been destroyed, two were dead, one activist went missing, and a U.S. marshal was left paralyzed. Thirty-nine years later, key figures from the movement, Russell Means, Clyde Bellecourt and Dennis Banks arrived at the Dakota Conference at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, S.D., where the events and the meaning of the Wounded Knee Occupation would be discussed. There to greet them were former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph Trimbach and his son John, ardent, life-long critics of AIM. Never before had so many key occupation figures from the movement and the government been under the same roof at the same time. Accusations of murders and cover-ups began to fly from both sides, and organizers had to beef up security. This would be no ordinary academic conference. The vitriolic speeches and angry reactions from both the pro- and anti-AIM participants exposed the still festering wounds that have wracked Pine Ridge Reservation as a result of the occupation for four decades. Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding gives readers an account of the major issues presented at the conference, along with a summary of the occupation itself, the Banks and Means leadership trial in St. Paul, Minn., and the bloody years on Pine Ridge that followed. It also addresses the enduring unsolved mystery of civil rights activist Ray Robinson, who entered the occupied village, and was never seen alive again.

Tamara Duffy spots her former boyfriend on the steps leading down to a crowded Tokyo subway station. The 29-year-old American follows him into a train packed with morning commuters. Aum Shinrikyo member Siha walks down the steps of the station wearing a surgical mask and gloves, carrying a clear plastic umbrella in one hand and two bags of nerve gas in the other. Inspector Shin Nomura, sitting at his desk at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, knows something bad is about to happen, but is powerless to stop it. It's March 20, 1995, and their lives are about to change forever.

Descending 1,885 miles straight down the center of the United States from Westhope, North Dakota, to Brownsville, Texas, is U.S. 83, one of the oldest and longest of the federal highways that hasn't been replaced by an Interstate. Award-winning author Stew Magnuson takes readers on a trip through the Nebraska Sand Hills, the Smoky River Valley in Kansas and the singular Oklahoma Panhandle. Along the route are the stories of the famous, the infamous, and the forgotten. Buffalo Bill Cody hunted these lands, but what about Buffalo Jones, who set out to save the American bison from extinction? This is where the ruthless, but now largely forgotten bank robbers, the Fleagles committed their most heinous crime; where the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia met George Armstrong Custer and Pussy Cat Nell dispatched the corrupt Sheriff "Brushy" Bush with a shotgun blast. What ties together President Eisenhower, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and author Truman Capote? Highway 83, of course.

Descending 897 miles from the top of the Texas Panhandle to the state's southernmost point at Brownsville is U.S. 83, one of the longest federal highways that hasn't been replaced by an Interstate. Award-winning author Stew Magnuson takes readers on a trip through the Lone Star State's sparsely populated ranchlands, its scenic Hill Country and the historically rich Lower Rio Grande Valley. "Every town has a story to tell," says Magnuson. A massacre in Menard marked the beginning of the end for the Spanish Empire in America. Wellington is where the notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde sent their car careening into the Red River. On a ranch just east of Brownsville, Ranger "Rip" Ford led the charge at the final battle of the Civil War. Magnuson uncovers the stories of the famous, the infamous and the forgotten as he explores a road like no other in America. "From the top of the Texas Panhandle through Red River country, from rolling farm and ranchlands to the Mexican border, Stew Magnuson shares a journey that is as much personal as historical. His tales of roads and rails, struggles epic and small, heroes and criminals and everyday folks past and present, paint a portrait that compels us to gas up the car and go, and find these places for ourselves." - Barbara Brannon Executive director of the Texas Plains Trail Region

Examining Raymond Yellow Thunders death at the hands of four white men in 1972, this title looks deep into the past that gave rise to the tragedy. It recounts the largely forgotten struggles of American Indian Movement activist Bob Yellow Bird and tells the story of Whiteclay, Nebraska, and the controversial border hamlet.