Local Economics

In 1980, Exxon U.S.A., the world's largest corporation, began development of a five-billion-dollar oil shale industry in the pristine Colorado River Valley. Within eighteen months, Exxon had canceled its elaborate Colony project and 2,100 workers were immediately laid off. Boomtown Blues chronicles the social, environmental, and economic havoc created by one of the most expensive boom and bust cycles in the history of the American West.

This practical and engaging guide is your modern-day roadmap to dominating online business directories—the digital evolution of the Yellow Pages. It opens with a relatable reminder of how finding local services used to mean flipping through a fat phonebook. Today, it's all about online visibility. If your business isn't easily found online, you're basically a ghost. The book breaks down how to get listed in key directories like Google, Yelp, and industry-specific sites, showing you how to attract more customers, boost your SEO, and become the go-to in your local area. Each chapter offers ...

In 2005, Margaret Jones Bolsterli learned that her great-great-grandfather was a free mulatto named Jordan Chavis, who owned an antebellum plantation near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The news was a shock; Bolsterli had heard about the plantation in family stories told during her Arkansas Delta childhood, but Chavis' name and race had never been mentioned. With further exploration, Bolsterli found that when Chavis' children crossed the Mississippi River between 1859 and 1875 for exile in Arkansas, they passed into the white world, leaving the family’s racial history completely behind.