The Yankee Road

Who is a Yankee and where did the term come from? Join author Jim McNiven as he explores the emergence and influence of Yankee culture while traversing an old transcontinental highway reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific—US 20, which he nicknames "The Yankee Road." The Yankee Road: Tracing the Journey of the New England Tribe that Created Modern America combines fascinating history with a travel narrative, taking the reader on a journey through the places Yankees and their descendants settled as they expanded westward. Using a physical road to connect locations important to the Yankee cultural "road," McNiven takes us on side trips into individual stories, introducing readers to the origins of such large-scale and diverse ideas as conservation, public education, telegraphy, mass production, religion, and labor reform. This second volume of a projected trilogy, Domination, centers on the growth of industry around the Great Lakes in the mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth century, something that led to the Yankee victory in the Civil War and the emergence of the reunited country as a major world power. Erastus Corning, Ida Tarbell, John Brown, JD Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, the Kellogg brothers, the Wright brothers and Judge Gary, all make appearances.

Who is a Yankee and where did the term come from? Though shrouded in myth and routinely used as a substitute for American, the achievements of the Yankees have influenced nearly every facet of our modern way of life. Join author Jim McNiven as he explores the emergence and influence of Yankee culture while traversing an old transcontinental highway reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific -- US 20, which he nicknames "The Yankee Road." The Yankee Road: Tracing the Journey of the New England Tribe that Created Modern America combines fascinating history with a travel narrative, taking the reader on a journey through the places Yankees and their descendants settled as they expanded westward. Using a physical road to connect locations important to the Yankee cultural "road," McNiven takes us on twenty-two side trips into individual stories, introducing readers to the origins of such large-scale and diverse ideas as conservation, public education, telegraphy, mass production, religion, and labor reform. See familiar places and stories in a Yankee light, such as the fight for women's rights in Seneca Falls and Walden Pond that Thoreau made famous. Learn about less familiar venues like Route 128's technology companies that led to the creation of the computer industry (and incidentally, the Internet), and to the Worcester suburb of Shrewsbury, where two old women changed the world by making possible the birth control pill. McNiven's first tour goes as far west as the Pennsylvania-New York border, with more stories to come. As we travel The Yankee Road, we will meet some of the men and women who made these ideas happen. Harry Truman once said, "I like roads. I like to move." This is a road book. Come on along.

Who is a Yankee and where did the term come from? Join author Jim McNiven as he explores the emergence and influence of Yankee culture while traversing an old transcontinental highway reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific—US 20, which he nicknames "The Yankee Road." The Yankee Road: Tracing the Journey of the New England Tribe that Created Modern America combines fascinating history with a travel narrative, taking the reader on a journey through the places Yankees and their descendants settled as they expanded westward. Using a physical road to connect locations important to the Yankee cultural "road," McNiven takes us on side trips into individual stories, introducing readers to the origins of such large-scale and diverse ideas as conservation, public education, telegraphy, mass production, religion, and labor reform. Volume 3 takes us from Chicago, the site of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, westward across northern Illinois to the Pacific shore at Newport, Oregon. Along the way, we will encounter the social activist and first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize, Jane Addams, as well as stories about four famous painters of western scenes. Going westward, we meet Iowa Civil War heroine, Annie Wittenmeyer, and scientist, Edwards Deming, among others. In Nebraska there is 'Doc' Middleton, 'King of the horse thieves,' and the mass entertainers, 'Buffalo Bill Cody, Walt Disney, and P. T. Barnum. In Wyoming, we see grandmother and housewife, Louisa Swain, who went shopping in downtown Laramie and made history as the first woman in history ever to legally vote in an official election. Then, it is off along Route 20 to Yellowstone Park and its volcanic wonders. The road passes by Rexburg, Idaho, the birthplace of the inventor of television, and then goes into Oregon to Newport, named by a Mainer who had good memories of Newport Rhode Island, where he vacationed as a child. Through these 3 volumes, Uncle Sam has accompanied us, by hitchhiking, then driving an early car past the Pennsylvania hills, until the road ends at the Pacific Ocean, where he stops to watch Captain Cook's ship, the Endeavour pass by​ on its way north, lit by a brilliant sunset.

How did America become great? How did this country become the most successful, powerful, and prosperous nation in the history of the world? Was it because of the nation's unprecedented founding documents? Was it due to the scores of immigrants from all over the world who brought their dreams and talents to America's shores? Or did America become great, as some contend, through racism, theft, and genocide? Author Troy Tyson proposes a unique argument as to the origins of American greatness: that the country's unparalleled success is a result not of its founding documents, nor its celebrated openness to people of all backgrounds, nor of genocidal tyranny. Rather, The Yankee Way asserts that the nation's great power and success stem primarily from the traits of a comparatively small, peculiar ethnic group from New England known as the Yankees. These traits, which include morality, industriousness, respect for law and order, commitment to education, and dedication to traditional family values, were developed first by the early Puritans of New England, then passed down to their Yankee descendants, who finally embedded them into the cultural DNA of the United States. The Yankee Way explores, in fascinating detail, the history of the Yankees, and the process by which they created modern America and instilled within it their distinct cultural characteristics. Further, though, the book serves as a warning to Americans as to what the future might hold, as the nation rapidly moves away from this critical cultural inheritance, and leaves The Yankee Way behind.

With rare access to the inner sanctum of the New York Yankees, SNY analyst Andy Martino weaves two years of exclusive interviews with general manager Brian Cashman into a revelatory account of never-before-told stories about Derek Jeter, Aaron Judge, Alex Rodriguez, the complex front office, team ownership, and insights into the World Series wins and day-to-day running of the team that fans never get to see. When Brian Cashman arrived in the Bronx as an intern in 1986, he discovered a team in chaos, run on impulse and emotion and lacking the sheen that had defined the Yankees in earlier eras. Decades later, Cashman had risen through the ranks of the front office, earned the trust of the Steinbrenner family, and become the longest-serving GM in the Yankees’ storied history, helping to transform the Yankees to glory with a string of World Series championships and an unmatched streak of winning seasons. With unprecedented inside access and featuring exclusive interviews with Cashman, owner Hal Steinbrenner, top front-office executives, current Yankee stars and coaches, award-winning baseball journalist Andy Martino gives fans a view from the GM’s seat that we would never normally see. From Cashman’s battles with inscrutable team captain Derek Jeter, to tensions between Jeter and A-Rod, to Cashman’s struggles with beloved manager Joe Torre. This book explores the management of egos on the field and in the front office, as well as the evolution of the manager position over generations and into the analytics era. Packed with drama and intrigue, this is the definitive inside account of the most intriguing and storied franchise in Major League Baseball.

Yankee Come Home explores one family's history in Cuba, and through it, the intense, complex, smoldering relationship between the island nation and its leviathan neighbor. In Cuba's most entrancing, storied landscape, William Craig is searching for a history that his family has lost-and now needs to recover. He's looking for the truth about his mysterious great-grandfather, Thomas O'Brien, a self-proclaimed hero of the "splendid little war" who left a legacy of glorious, painful lies. Living a dream that haunts American hearts-the dream of escaping the past, of becoming who we say we are-"Papa" died leaving his own children wondering who he'd really been. Along the way, Craig searches for the place where Gilded Age America abandoned republican ideals in favor of imperial ambition-and where his own generation of Americans now preside over arbitrary imprisonment and systematized torture. "I needed to see Guantánamo the way some Americans needed to drive through the night to kneel at JFK's coffin, and others are drawn to Ground Zero," he writes. "Sometimes, we don't know what we've lost until we trace the scars." Traveling with Craig, readers will join in present-day adventures: spirit-possession rituals, black market odysseys, roots-music epiphanies, and discovering the continuing impact of the war in 1898 on both Cuba and America. The story of the United States in Cuba is fascinating, but none too flattering. Like the reality of "Papa" O'Brien's identity, it reflects more hubris than heroism, more avarice than sacrifice. In the end, however, Craig's journey in Yankee Come Home is a transformation from disillusionment to redemption.