Bøker av Bill Vaughn

The first narrative history revealing the entire story of the development, operation, and harmful legacy of the Native American boarding schools—and how our nation still has much to resolve before we can fully heal.

The only thing the Herrins and the Burkes had in common was their Irish ancestry. Opposites in most ways, the families nevertheless personified two common threads in the history of the West. As the owner of an iconic Montana stock-raising operation--the famous Oxbow Ranch on the shores of Holter Lake--Holly Herrin ruled with frontier violence and legal action over an empire of cattle and sheep that covered thirty square miles. George Burke was a real estate agent, a sheriff, a game warden, and a civil engineer in a family of professionals--newspaper editors, lawyers, and politicians, including a U.S. senator. The country-mouse Herrins voted Republican, the city-mouse Burkes Democratic. Both patriarchs, fighting with their fists and their lawyers, were active players in the far-reaching dramas and ludicrous comedies that shaped the politics and economy of modern Montana. In 1949 the clans joined their fortunes together when rancher Keith Herrin, Holly''s grandson, married George Burke''s daughter Molly, a wire service reporter. It was a union that produced five girls and one boy--an heir. Twenty years later, the marriage and the Herrin ranches were failing. The story of the Burkes and Herrins has never been told before, and the history they made has been largely forgotten. The Last Heir recounts twelve decades of Burke and Herrin triumphs and tragedies: the story of Montana''s Missouri River heartland, a history seen through the eyes and daily lives of those who lived it. Bill Vaughn is a former contributing editor for Outside Magazine. His is the author of Hawthorn: The Tree That Has Nourished, Healed, and Inspired through the Ages.

One of humankind's oldest companions, the hawthorn tree, is bound up in the memories of every recorded age and the plot lines of cultures all across the Northern Hemisphere. Hawthorn examines the little-recognized political, cultural, and natural history of this ancient spiky plant. Used for thousands of years in the impenetrable living fences that defined the landscapes of Europe, the hawthorn eventually helped feed the class antagonism that led to widespread social upheaval. In the American Midwest, hawthorn-inspired hedges on the prairies made nineteenth-century farming economically rewarding for the first time. Later, in Normandy, mazelike hedgerows bristling with these thorns nearly cost the Allies World War II. Bill Vaughn shines light on the full scope of the tree's influence over human events. He also explores medicinal uses of the hawthorn, the use of its fruit in the world's first wine, and the symbolic role its spikes and flowers played in pagan beliefs and Christian iconography. As entertaining as it is illuminating, this book is the first full appreciation of the hawthorn's abundant connections with humanity.