Bookstore: Military History
Hero Street, U.S.A.: The Story of Little Mexico's Fallen Soldiers by Marc Wilson
Second Street in the railroad town of Silvis, Ill., was known as Little Mexico. Its people had fled Mexico during its revolution almost 100 years ago and found work with the railroads, seeking to survive, to move in from society's margins. Nobody knows how patriotic we Mexican Americans were. Seventy-eight men from 35 small houses, shacks and converted boxcars served in WWII and Korea. Its veterans were blackballed by the local VFW, which feared the Mexican Americans would take the post over. But recognition of the community's sacrifices came in 1968 when a grateful legislature renamed Second Street Hero Street.
B & W hardcover with 192 pages (including 15 photographs)
Publication Information: University of Oklahoma Press/ 2009
Price: $25.00
Lincoln a
nd the Black Hawk War by Lloyd H. Effandt
This book details the history of the Black Hawk War, including the events that contibuted and lead to the war and the role Lincoln played in the war, which is often forgotten.
B & W with 63 pages
Publication Information: Rock Island Historical Society/ 1992
Cost: $5.00
Rebels at Rock Island: The Story of a Civil War Prison by Benton McAdams
The testimony of Ashley Wilkes of Gone With the Wind, has helped to seal Rock Island's reputation as the "Andersonville of the North." McAdams reveals that this Illinois prison was considerably more humane than some accounts have suggested. Showing how Rock Island was a microcosm of the political mood of the entire nation during the Civil War, McAdams pays special attention to the prison's political and economic ties to the local community. Two dozen rare photographs and sketches round out the unflinching descriptions of prison life.
B & W hardcover with 260 pages (24 photographs)
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press/ 2000
Price: $32.00
The Rock Island Civil War Prison" Andersonville of the North?
In December of 1863, about 5000 Confederate prisoners were brought on dreadfully long train rides to a new, and ill-prepared, prison camp on Rock Island. Over the following twenty months the camp housed over 12,000 prisoners of war from the South of whom almost 2,000 would perish there.A severe winter and a cholera epidemic caused hundreds of prisoner deaths in its first months. However, its overall death rate was much lower than the rate at Andersonville. Special emphasis in the documentary will be placed on how the Rock Island Prison got its undeserved reputation as, "The Andersonville of the North."
Website:
http://www.heritagedocumentaries.org/RI_Prison_Trailer.htm
DVD approximate 30 minutes
Heritage Documentaries, Inc./ 2012
Price: $15.00