Peek in the Stacks

In 1915, the second Ku Klux Klan was founded by William J. Simmons in Atlanta, Georgia. By the 1920s, social tensions brought on by rapid industrialization and increased immigration in urban areas had set the stage for the Klan’s expanding popularity. Unlike the first Klan, the second Klan was...

The legend of the American cowboy was not only shaped by the Vaquero tradition, but by a host of other pioneers who sought to make a new life in the west. In January 1837, former Midwesterners Philip Leggett Edwards and Ewing Young would set out from Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) on what came to be known as...

There exists a place where travel is so treacherous that survival is not guaranteed. The cold is so brutal here that mere seconds of exposure can cause irreparable damage. Optical illusions abound and strange animals brave the fierce temperatures. The early explorers declared it to be an "awful place," and still...

Chase Craig (1910-2001) was an illustrator, writer, editor, and producer of comic books and comic strips from the mid-1930s through the late 1970s. After graduating from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1934, Chase began working for the Christian Science Monitor, drawing the single panel comic "Little Chauncey" which...