Denver

Denver turned 150 just a few years ago--not too shabby for a city so down on its luck in 1868 that Cheyenne boosters deemed it "too dead to bury." Still, most of the city's history is a recent memory: Denver's entire story spans just two human lifetimes. In Denver Inside and Out, eleven authors illustrate how pioneers built enduring educational, medical, and transportation systems; how Denver's social and political climate contributed to the elevation of women; how Denver residents wrestled with-and exploited-the city's natural features; and how diverse cultural groups became an essential part of the city's fabric. By showing how the city rose far above its humble roots, the authors illuminate the many ways that Denver residents have never stopped imagining a great city. Published in time for the opening of the new History Colorado Center in Denver in 2012, Denver Inside and Out hints at some of the social, economic, legal, and environmental issues that Denverites will have to consider over the next 150 years. Finalist for the 2012 Colorado Book Awards

Jingyi Song’s book Denver’s Chinatown 1875-1900: Gone But Not Forgotten tells the story of the rise and fall of Denver’s Chinatown interwoven with the complexity of race, class, immigration, politics, and economic policies.

Winner of the 2013 Colorado Book Award for Literary Fiction - a poignant, darkly comic debut novel about a father and son finding their way together as their livelihood inexorably disappears When Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams returns to the family farm in eastern Colorado to bury his dead cat, he finds his widowed father, Emmett, living in squalor. There’s no money, the land is fallow, and a local banker has cheated the senile Emmett out of the majority of the farm equipment and his beloved Cessna. Unemployed and without prospects, Shakespeare settles in as caretaker to both his dad and the farm while simultaneously getting drawn into an unlikely clique of former classmates. Threatened with the farm’s foreclosure, Shakespeare, Emmett, and his misfit friends hatch a half-serious plot to rob the very bank that stole their future.

This memoir of a man who was instrumental in shaping the vibrant Five Points neighborhood that is now Denver’s only Historic Cultural District begins with his roots. His parents fled the Jim Crow laws of Texas on an eight-month 1903 wagon train into Indian Territory where Leroy Smith was born in the oldest black town of what had by then become Oklahoma. His personal “Great Migration” began when he walked across the border into Arkansas. Working and vagabonding his way northeast to be rescued when he received a bus ticket from a friend who suggested he come west to Utah for a decent job on the railway. Working the trains, Leroy was drawn to Denver which he had learned was the “Harlem of the West.” There he met Lulu Ann Green, convinced her in a whirlwind courtship to marry and join him as a partner in a tiny shop they rented for ten dollars a month. Leroy bought black newspapers, hair products and vinyl music on his Chicago train runs that Lulu sold to Denver’s fast growing black population. By 1941 Leroy could quit the railroad to create the “Rhythm Record Shop” in a two-story building he purchased in the busy Wellton Street business district known as “The Points.” In 1944 he held his first dance concert which his ingenuity handily saved from disaster and began booking the great names of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz, etc. to cities in Colorado and surrounding states. Often referred to as “the Mayor of Five Points,” he was known as a cool band leader who sold “race music,” black hair products and quality goods within the “red lines.” Smith was also a gifted sportsman who hunted, fished, and pitched on black baseball teams. He soon added the words “and Sporting Goods” to the already expanded merchandise found in his shop, offering fishing and hunting licenses with gear. He became Colorado’s first black outfitter licensed to sell firearms with his sports equipment. He was named an honorary game warden and—after lobbying for an officer-manned lockup only three doors away—an honorary police officer. An audacious masonic leader, Leroy fought city hall to bring black Shiners to his ingeniously desegregated Denver hotels for conventions. He paid to advertise his ventures on the radio by becoming, his own disc jockey on his midnight “Rockin’ with Leroy” show. His sharp instincts for enterprise and entertainment lifted him into business, cultural, mining, and other endeavors that inspired the diverse neighborhood to action. His political inclinations led him to success in opening the second floor of his building as the Voters Club, a swinging night club with live music and famed visitors which he used to rally African Americans to vote and fight for their American civil rights. All proceeds from sale of this scrapbook of photos, letters and memories are destined solely for the support of Denver’s Black American West Museum & Heritage Center.

From creator of Veggie Tales® Phil Vischer, these fun and easy-to-read picture books based on the popular video series Buck Denver Asks... What's in the Bible? teach children about character and virtue through beloved Bible stories. What does it mean to be a good friend? Buck Denver wants to be friends with God, so he makes a giant robot suit to be closer to Him. To help Buck understand the true meaning of friendship, his friends share their favorite Bible stories. First, Sunday School Lady tells him all about David and Jonathan and their loyalty to one another in tough times. Then Pastor Paul talks about how Jesus offers friendship to each of us. In the end, Buck learns that God uses friends to help us grow stronger and our friendship with Jesus helps us grow closer to God!

By the 1920s, Denver had outgrown its frontier-town beginnings. But for some, life was still as perilous as the surrounding terrain. The insidious influence of the Ku Klux Klan was reaching its peak, and those who stood in its path feared for their safety. Denver is the saga of a family caught in this tempestuous time. To newspaperman Tom Hastings, his writing matters more than anything. As the book opens, President Harding has just died, and Hastings finds himself drawn toward the biggest story of his career. But his wife resents his allegiance to the newspaper and his Jewish stepfather is a target for the supremacist Kleagles—two good reasons not to persist in his pursuit of the story: that and the KKK has penetrated the highest levels of government in the state. Some eighty characters surround Tom Hastings: there’s his half-sister, the quiet, passionate Jewess Anna Kohl; David Waldo, a socialist and friend to Jack London; Willie Brown, a rising political star torn between his desire for elective office and the love of his life; and Marvel Millette, a Nellie Bly–like reporter in whom Tom Hastings finally meets his match. John Dunning creates flesh-and-blood figures, not only of these fictional characters but of historical personages as well. There is John Galen Locke, the Grand Dragon of the KKK, and Fred Bonfils, a founder of a newspaper dynasty built on tabloid sensationalism; President Calvin Coolidge, too, makes a gruff appearance. Denver is a panoramic novel as vibrant as the city for which it is named, as tumultuous as the era in which it is set. John Dunning never lets the reader lose sight of the men and women who live their lives on the pages of this saga. While crosses burst into angry flames and menacing droves of white-robed Klansmen gather against the torch-lit skies, passions, fears, joys, and hates are played out in Denver in the 1920s.