History Teaches Us Best

The Era of Prohibition (as in I was prohibited from using this because I lost my credit card)

la mia carta, come dicono in Italiano

I had some problems with my footnotes because apparently the webpages for the links area dead, and I'm not sure how to fix that, but I promise I will get that done.

Download paper_rev_2.pdf

Outline? Is this an upper level class or something?

My outline is definitely a work in progress. I think I have some pretty good ideas for how to write my paper, but, as always, I'm looking to get better ideas. My conclusion is definitely weak right now, but conclusions are always the hardest part for me. Also, even though my introduction looks like it'll be short, I always change it a million times when I'm actually writing it, so it'll work out in the end.

Download outline.rtf

I have no idea what I'm doing

So I have tried tirelessly to find information on any variation of my topic to no avail. Any suggestion I was given has led me to a dead end.

To that end, I have thrown around a couple of ideas for another topic. I thought about doing something on the subject of oil but figured that may have been beaten to death. However, Jason gave me a good idea; to do something on baseball in the west. In the 1950s and 60s, multiple teams moved from the East coast to California, in a relocation not seen before in sports. These relocations dramatically affected the social landscape of California.

I hope someone can tell me if this is a viable topic. It's something I'd really like to write on, but I'm not sure if it is an adequate topic for this class.

Someone help!

What happens in Vegas...

www.spotlightvegas.com
Downtown Las Vegas in 1920

www.spotlightvegas.com
Downtown Las Vegas in 2002

Book review: Beyond the Mafia: Italian Americans and the development of Las Vegas
This book gives a history of Italian American influence in the development of Las Vegas. The book covers everything from headline entertainers to the controversy over the Mafia's involvement. This book will help my research by providing an in depth look at the Italians in Las Vegas.

Any other sources I found seemed not to be available on the Mason Library website, even in the e-journal finder.

www.spotlightvegas.com
Downtown Las Vegas in 1920

www.spotlightvegas.com
Downtown Las Vegas in 2002

Book review: Beyond the Mafia: Italian Americans and the development of Las Vegas
This book gives a history of Italian American influence in the development of Las Vegas. The book covers everything from headline entertainers to the controversy over the Mafia's involvement. This book will help my research by providing an in depth look at the Italians in Las Vegas.

Any other sources I found seemed not to be available on the Mason Library website, even in the e-journal finder.

Spaniards and miners

While reading the first few chapters I became interested in a part of American history that isn't taught that extensively in any public school system (why is this?) or in any general American history class in college: the early years of European/Native American contact. There are many questions to be asked about this subject but I will ask just a few. 1) What factors contributed to the differences in Native American reactions to contact with the Europeans? Each tribe seemed to react differently, so I assume there must be a reason for this. 2) In the early years of exploration, why did Europeans focus more in the Caribbean islands and Mexico more than what would become the U.S.? 3) William Penn seemed to have a very good approach for dealing with the Native Americans. Why did other settlers not use this effective approach?

Another interesting topic is that of expansion. The U.S. expanded very quickly and with a fair amount of ease, it seems like. In just over 100 years, this country went from 13 little states to stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That's incredible, if you ask me. There are definitely some questions to be asked about this subject 1) Did quick expansion help lead to the Civil War? 2) Was it the foreign policies of the early 1800s, specifically in Mexico, that helped to split North and South? 3) Why did politicians and propagandists coin the term "manifest destiny" even though most of the population didn't believe in it? 4) Was is good domestic policy to limit where Native Americans could live, or did this policy create more problems than it "solved?"

First Post

So this is my first post. Not for homework. Just to get a feel for this blog thing. My name is Dan. I'm a senior here at GMU, getting ready to graduate this fall with a BA in History. Pretty exciting stuff. I'm looking forward to this semester, as it's a topic I've never really studied before. Should be a good time.