Biography & Autobiography

Organized crime was born in the back of a fruit store in Marion. Before America saw headlines about the Capone Mob, the Purple Gang and Murder Inc., the specter of the Black Hand terrorized nearly every major city.

Fears that the Mafia had reached our shores and infiltrated every Italian immigrant community kept police alert and citizens on edge. It was only a matter of time before these professed Robin Hoods formed a band. And when they did, the eyes of the world turned to Ohio, particularly when the local Black Hand outfit known as the Society of the Banana went on trial. Authors David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker unfold this first and nearly forgotten chapter on crime syndicate history.

Relive the most unforgettable moments - even those that diehards have longed to forget - of the New York Mets.

Since their inception in 1962, the New York Mets have not traveled the straight and narrow path. These top 10 lists chart the many highs and lows over that journey - from World Series victories in 1969 and 1986 through an injury-shattered 2017 season. The team's passionate fans lovingly embrace the triumphs, like when Mike Piazza's post-9/11 home run lifted a devastated city, just as they endure the frustrations, caused by such culprits as Chipper Jones and Chase Utley. From the greatest left-handed pitchers to the worst trades to the best single-game hitting performances, author Brian Wright ranks the most unforgettable memories in the history of New York's inimitable baseball franchise.

Montana State's Golden Bobcats celebrates a storied history from the hardwood

Ashworth "Cat" Thompson and brothers Frank and Orland Ward didn't know what to expect when they left southern Utah in the Fall of 1926. They arrived in Bozeman to play on the Montana State College basketball team under charismatic coach and fellow Utah native Ott Romney and Assistant Coach Schubert Dyche. Teamed with Montana products Brick Breeden and Max Worthington the following season, the core formed one of the best teams in the country. Despite Romney returning to Provo at the end of 1928, the Bobcats persevered in '29 under Schubert to win the consensus college national basketball championship, with Cat and Frank Ward earning All-American honors.

Author Paul R. Wylie recounts the on and off court challenges and triumphs of the Bobcats' Golden team

Through photographs of people, events, and machines, Digital Equipment Corporation tells the story of the unassuming computer revolutionaries who reshaped the technological world.

From its inception in 1957, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts, carved itself a role in American business unlike any other company. Launched by Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer Ken Olsen with a $70,000 investment from the country's first venture capital firm, DEC rapidly became a pioneer in computer technology. In its heyday, DEC had a valuation of more than $12 billion and employed approximately one hundred twenty thousand people worldwide, making it second only to IBM. Its people and technology contributed to making computers increasingly affordable, which led directly to the advent of the personal computer, the first computer games, and computer networks. DEC was also a leader in the Internet revolution, claiming the dubious distinction of launching the first spam mailing and registering one of the first commercial domain names. Through photographs of people, events, and machines, Digital Equipment Corporation tells the story of the unassuming computer revolutionaries who reshaped the technological world. It is written for anyone who is interested in how the present era of computing ubiquity has evolved since the 1940s, when IBM chairman Thomas Watson predicted that the whole world might need no more than five computers.

Images of America: Italians of Stark Countyfocuses on Italian immigration into Stark County beginning in the late 1800s.

In the late 1800s, Stark County's urban hub of Canton and the surrounding communities were in the middle of a thriving expansion driven by industry, transportation, and manufacturing. Along with this growth came the need for labor, with immigration filling many of those needs. Italians came to Stark County to work in the steel mills, in the coal mines, and on the railroad, as well as to start their own small businesses. Once established, Italian families began to replicate the community foundations from their native land, and in turn these foundations reinforced embedded values: family, food, religion, music, and freedom.

This photographic history illustrates these values while bringing to life the character, work ethic, determination, and love of life of the Italian people of Stark County. Local author and Italian American J.A. Musacchia was born and raised in Stark County and is a member of the Sugarcreek Township Historical Societyand the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum.

Author William L. Tabac describes the extraordinary legal proceeding with the twists and turns of a modern television drama and the fall of a prominent attorney.

Tommy Osborn's star was rising. The young Nashville lawyer led a band of Tennessee reformers to victory in a landmark Supreme Court case. Hailed by Chief Justice Earl Warren as the most important of his career, Baker v. Carr's one man, one vote mandate revolutionized how Americans chose their representatives. Osborn was hired by Jimmy Hoffa to take on Bobby Kennedy for the fourth time. Unfortunately, the young lawyer met his match in Walter Sheridan, Kennedy's top aide and brilliant spymaster.

Many Americans are familiar with Thomas Edison's invention factory in Menlo Park, where he patented the phonograph, the light bulb and more than one thousand other items. Yet many other ideas have grown in the Garden State, too.

New Jerseyans brought sound and music to movies and built the very first drive-in theater. In addition to the first cultivated blueberry, tasty treats like ice cream cones and M&Ms are also Jersey natives. Iconic aspects of American life, like the batting cage, catcher's mask and even professional baseball itself, started in New Jersey. Life would be a lot harder without the vacuum cleaner, plastic and Band-Aids, and many important advances in medicine and surgery were also developed here. Join author Linda Barth as she explores groundbreaking, useful, fun and even silly inventions and their New Jersey roots.

Local historian Yance Marti uncovers the rough and rowdy blackguards who once made Milwaukee infamous.

The Cream City of yesteryear was a dingy haven for scofflaws and villains. Red-light districts peppered downtown's landscape, but none had the enduring allure of River Street, where Kitty Williams and Mary Kingsley operated high-class brothels. Chinese opium dens flourished in the backrooms of laundries. The demise of the Whiskey Ring brought down local distillers in a nationwide scandal that nearly reached the Oval Office. As a result, Police Chief John Janssen and the Committee to Investigate White Slavery and Kindred Vice waged a protracted battle to contain the most brazen offenses.

A wine country odyssey.

In 1976, the picturesque, agrarian Napa Valley was all but unknown to those who didn’t live there. That changed dramatically when Steven Spurrier and Patricia Gallagher decided to host a blind tasting of American and French wines in Paris. When wines from California defeated those of France, the world was shocked, an industry reawakened, and Napa Valley exploded in a frenzy of growth and development. Families who had farmed for generations battled to hang onto their land, and many paid a steep price as the area transformed into one of the world’s premier wine-growing regions.

Join author Mark Gudgel as he explores the trials and tribulations of Napa’s meteoric rise to prominence.

Just off the coast of the Bronx in Long Island Sound sits Hart Island, where more than one million bodies are buried in unmarked graves.

Beginning as a Civil War prison and training site and later a psychiatric hospital, the location became the repository for New York City’s unclaimed dead. The island’s mass graves are a microcosm of New York history, from the 1822 burial crisis to casualties of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and victims of the AIDS epidemic. Important artists who died in poverty have been discovered, including Disney star Bobby Driscoll and playwright Leo Birinski. Author Michael T. Keene reveals the history of New York’s potter’s field and the stories of some of its lost souls.

Author Tobin T. Buhk recounts the thrilling tales of Detroit's most violent, clever and misunderstood female criminals.

Queen of the Underworld Sophie Lyons faced off with detective Teresa Lewis in court three times, and twice in the street, rendering both women battered and bloodied. Nellie Pope goaded her lover to axe her husband in what the press called one of the most atrocious, cold-blooded, and deliberately-planned murders in city history. Mother Elinor L. Mason, High Priestess of the Flying Roller Colony, was no holy roller but a criminal chameleon who changed personas as easily as some people change clothes. And a feud between Delray madams Julia Toth and Annie Smith exposed widespread graft in the thriving red-light industry and led to one of the worst police scandals in Motor City history. These stories and more await in this deliciously entertaining collection.

Settled in the 1640s and originally a part of Charlestown, Malden grew over two centuries into a thriving residential and manufacturing city.

Meet fiery revolutionary Peter Thacher and Malden industrialist and philanthropist Elisha Converse. Explore the details of the first bank robbery homicide in the United States. Learn about Malden's instructions for independence, which predated the Declaration of Independence. Delve into the suspicion and intrigue surrounding the infamous murder of Frank Converse. Author Frank Russell brings to life the first 250 years of Malden history.

From railroad towns like Ladore to cow towns like Newton and Wichita, southeast Kansas pulsed with rowdy activity during the late nineteenth century.

The unruly atmosphere drew outlaws, including the Dalton Gang, and even crazed serial killers the likes of the Bender clan. Violent incidents, from gunfights to lynchings, punctuated the region’s Wild West era, and the allure of the frontier also attracted the everyday people whose passions sometimes spawned bloodshed as well. Award-winning author Larry E. Wood explores thirteen of these remarkable episodes in the criminal history of southeast Kansas.

What began as a simple scouting mission evolved into a full-scale battle when a regiment of Union soldiers unexpectedly encountered a detachment of Confederate cavalry.

Three months after the Civil War's first important battle at Manassas in 1861, Union and Confederate armies met again near the sleepy town of Leesburg. The Confederates pushed forward and scattered the Union line. Soldiers drowned trying to escape back to Union lines on the other side of the Potomac River. A congressional investigation of the battle had long-lasting effects on the war's political and military administration. Bill Howard narrates the history of the battle as well as its thorny aftermath.

Brooklyn, or Bruculinu, as many Italians affectionately pronounced it, is where Italian values, culture, and dreams thrived.

In an era when over four million Italians found their way to America, the first significant influx came during the 1880s, primarily from rural peasant communities fleeing poverty and overpopulation. Although Italians in South Brooklyn have been traced back as far as the 1820s, the 1855 New York Census did not list any Italian natives in Brooklyn; however, by 1890, there were 9,563 Italians residing in the borough. By 1900, Brooklyn's Italian population was second only to Manhattan. Although the last notable wave of Italian immigration ended in the 1960s, Italian remains one of the six prevalent foreign languages in New York according to a 2007 census estimate. This work serves as a time capsule to remind us of the contributions and influences these immigrants have offered to the community.

The Santa Clara Valley, with its rich soil and sunny weather, has been home to great diversity and great innovation long before it became known as Silicon Valley.

California’s first immigrants from Mexico were astonished by its beauty. “The land is moist and the hills have an abundance of rosemary and herbs, sunflowers in bloom, vines as plentiful as a vineyard,” wrote one. From the movie stars of Hollywood’s golden era who once came to play to billionaires who grew apricots for pleasure, the valley has hosted orchards, electric railroads, Army camps and even a love-struck poet.

Join author and historian Robin Chapman as she uncovers the true tales of this ever-changing place.

Award-winning author and historian Kerriann Flanagan Brosky uncovers some of the most ghastly and fascinating historical crimes committed on Long Island.

Beyond the idyllic countryside and suburban communities of Long Island lies a murky history of murder and mayhem. A Victorian romance went awry in Huntington when wealthy farmer Charles Kelsey was tarred, feathered and murdered in 1872. Thirty-five years before the famous witch trials of Salem, East Hampton had its own Puritan hysteria among charges of witchcraft. The 1937 kidnapping of wealthy heiress Alice Parsons shook the quiet town of Stony Brook and remains a mystery to this day.

Join local historian Tim Crumrin as he reveals the blackguards, rogues and swindlers of Terre Haute’s rough and rowdy past.

For more than a century, Terre Haute earned its reputation as a sin city. One of the most notorious red-light districts in the Midwest, the West End, housed sixty brothels and nearly one thousand prostitutes at its height in the 1920s. Across this sordid scene strode the stylish and indomitable Edith Brown, the city’s most famous madam. When Prohibition made the city bootlegger central, violence erupted as rival gangs vied for turf. Gamblers flooded in from all corners of the country, making Terre Haute’s Wire Room second only to Las Vegas. Through it all, corrupt politicians like Mayor Donn Roberts profited handsomely from grift and deception.

Did you know that escapees from an escargot farm keep the snail police on their toes?

The Outer Banks has a long history of unconventional characters and curious occurrences. A larger-than-life likeness of Sir Walter Raleigh was once beheaded in Manteo, and the town gave itself a royal makeover in honor of a visit from a princess. The village of Corolla was integral to the early years of the Space Race. Local author Sarah Downing shares these and many more offbeat tales.

Wild Women of Michigan commemorates the women of this state who boldly left their marks.

Countless Michiganian women performed extraordinary acts that challenged and improved the world. Madame Marie-Therese Cadillac served as the medicine woman in the frontier that became Detroit. Annie Taylor survived rolling over Niagara Falls in a barrel. After suffragist Anna Howard Shaw fought to vote, the state saw an influx of women running for office. In the 1970s, East Lansing's Patricia Beeman aided in efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. Suellen Finatri showcased an extreme side of equestrian sports by riding more than four thousand miles from St. Ignace to Skagway, Alaska. And World War II army flight nurse Aleda Lutz evacuated more than 3,500 wounded soldiers and is still recognized as one of America's most decorated servicewomen. Author and historian Norma Lewis commemorates the women who boldly left their marks.

New Hampshire's literary roots are long and rich, with names like Robert Frost, Celia Thaxter and Willa Cather beckoning book lovers.

Travel to Cornish and discover the connections between one of the state's premier novelists, Winston Churchill, and the British statesman of the same name. Experience north country beauty in Littleton, birthplace of Eleanor Porter, who introduced a new word into the English language. Learn how Newport native Sarah Josepha Hale became one of the most influential writers of her time. Follow young black novelist Harriet Wilson from Milford and the belated recognition of her groundbreaking book.

Local author Gary Crooker reveals the stories and places behind these and many more lettered luminaries.

Nadine McIlwain and Geraldine Radcliffe reveal the celebrated legends, unsung heroes and historic firsts of African Americans residing in the Canton community.

From Canton’s earliest days, the black population has contributed to the city’s, and even the nation’s, prominence and prosperity. During World War II, nineteen-year-old Harold White joined the famed Tuskegee Airmen of the Ninety-Ninth Fighter Squadron. Only a few years later, Dorothy White persevered through prejudice to become Canton’s first black teacher, paving the way for a long line of dedicated teachers stretching to the present day. Renowned R&B group the O’Jays formed in Canton, and professional golfer Renee Powell is just one of many local athletes to reach the heights of her profession.

The last Public Enemy No. 1 of the Depression era, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis reportedly compiled a record of fifty-four aliases, fifteen bank robberies, fourteen murders, three jailbreaks and two kidnappings.

His criminal career came to an end when J. Edgar Hoover and his famed G-Men apprehended the man they wanted more than any other in New Orleans. From there, Karpis found himself confined on Alcatraz Island, where he spent nearly twenty-six years - more than any inmate in the prison’s history. Historian Julie Thompson tells the true story of Karpis’s life and career, a riveting tale taking readers from rural Kansas and Ohio to the bustling streets of the Big Easy and into the bleak innards of “the Rock.”

A pioneer, a Soldier and a Visionary

In 1774, James Harrod founded the oldest, permanent English settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains. Establishing Harrodsburg was a symbolic act declaring the Kentucky frontier open for settlement. Harrod was a soldier and pioneer who was instrumental in exploration of the area. His settlement domesticated an area considered wild and untamed and has continued for more than 200 years. Author Bobbi Dawn Rightmyer details the beginning of this historic city and life of the man who founded it.

See the Conch Republic through Hemingway’s eyes.

Learn the story behind one of Detroit's most infamous mobs with rare photographs documenting their rise and fall.

Motor City Mafia: A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit chronicles the storied and hallowed gangland history of the notorious Detroit underworld. Scott M. Burnstein takes the reader inside the belly of the beast, tracking the bloodshed, exploits, and leadership of the southeast Michigan crime syndicate as never before seen in print. Through a stunning array of rare archival photographs and images, Motor City Mafia captures Detroit's most infamous past, from its inception in the early part of the 20th century, through the years when the iconic Purple Gang ruled the city's streets during Prohibition, through the 1930s and the formation of the local Italian mafia, and the Detroit crime family's glory days in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, all the way to the downfall of the area's mob reign in the 1980s and 1990s.

Steubenville Ohio, a mecca of murder was nicknamed Little Chicago with gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging running rampant for over one hundred years.

Steubenville's Water Street red-light district drew men from hundreds of miles away, as well as underage runaways. The white slave trade was rampant, and along with all the vice crimes, murders became a weekly occurrence. Law enforcement seemed to turn a blind eye, and cries of political corruption were heard in the state capital. This scenario replayed itself over and over again during the past century as mobsters and madams ruled and murders plagued the city and county at an alarming rate.

When the Peerless Quartet wrote “Way Down On Tampa Bay” in 1914, Tampa Bay’s musical roots started growing.

Tampa Bay is where Ray Charles created his first song, Hank Ballard wrote and recorded “The Twist,” and the Rolling Stones cranked out their hit “Satisfaction.” Stephen Stills attended both Plant High School and Admiral Farragut Academy, and Jim Morrison studied at St.Petersburg Junior College. Ella Fitzgerald kicked off her career on the storied Central Avenue in Ybor City. Savatage, Stranger, Diamond Grey, the Outlaws, Bleeding Hearts, Blackkout, the Arena Twins, Tampa Red, and Cheeky Monkey are all artists who have made a huge impact both locally and nationally. From its rock ‘n’ roll boom in the 1960s to the birth of death metal in the 1980s ...Tampa Bay has had a rich musical history!

In this book, national recording artist Charlie Souza (the Tropics, Tom Petty’s Mudcrutch, and the New Rascals) and Keith Wilkins (longtime bay-area music columnist, concert promoter, and founder of the Tampa Bay Music Scene Historical Society) have compiled over 150 photographs and accompanying details in order to help preserve and honor Tampa Bay’s rich musical history and give the talented artists who comprise it the respect they rightfully deserve.

Discover a lost world of farmers cutting hay with scythes and dancing to fiddle music on barn floors through the Long Island paintings of William Sidney Mount.

Explore vivid depictions of people of color, presented with great humanity when racist caricatures were the norm.

This landmark book reveals the lives of Rachel, the eel spearer; Henry Brazier, the left-handed fiddler; George Freeman, model for the jaunty banjo player, and other agricultural laborers, domestic workers, and musicians who posed for the artist.

Authors Katherine Kirkpatrick and Vivian Nicholson-Mueller take readers on a fascinating historical journey as they publicly honor, by name, the once-anonymous Black and mixed-race models whose images have achieved international recognition.

Chrissie Hynde, Devo..Rubber City Rebels...The Rubber City's rebel musical roots

Music made in Akron symbolized an attitude more so than a singular sound. Crafted by kids hell-bent on not following their parents into the rubber plants, the music was an intentional antithesis of Top 40 radio. Call it punk or call it new wave, but in a short few years, major labels signed Chrissie Hynde, Devo, the Waitresses, Tin Huey, the Bizarros, the Rubber City Rebels and Rachel Sweet. They had their own bars, the Crypt and the Bank. They had their own label, Clone Records. They even had their own recording space, Bushflow Studios. London's Stiff Records released an Akron compilation album, and suddenly there were Akron Nights in London clubs and CBGB was waiving covers for people with Akron IDs. Author Calvin Rydbom of the Akron Sound Museum remembers that short time when the Rubber City was the place.

Explore the summertime traditions and discover all the ways that Lackawanna County's Italian community seeks to preserve its heritage.

Boasting one of the nation's largest and most diverse Italian-American populations, Lackawanna County in Northeastern Pennsylvania joins old and new generations alike. With events such as La Corsa dei Ceri - commonly referred to as St. Ubaldo Day - in Jessup on Memorial Day Weekend and La Festa Italiana on downtown Scranton's Courthouse Square over Labor Day Weekend, every town in the county with an Italian population has its own story. Whether the people can trace their origins to Guardia or Gubbio, Felitto or Perugia, the Italians of Lackawanna County all share one thing in common: a strong sense of pride in their ethnic origins.

Cleveland's Little Italy's people, history and rebirth today can be found in these pages.

Developed in the late 19th century, Cleveland's Little Italy neighborhood, on the city's east side, was peopled with Italian artisans and craftsmen, many of whom were drawn to jobs carving monuments for the nearby Lake View Cemetery. The compact area relied on the local parish, Holy Rosary; charitable institutions, such as Alta House; and the cohesiveness of the neighborhood to sustain itself. It also produced a number of interesting favorite sons, including Angelo Vitantonio, the inventor of the pasta machine; championship boxer Tony Brush; and Anthony Celebrezze, Cleveland mayor, federal judge, and secretary of health, education, and welfare under Pres. John F. Kennedy and Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson. The area continued to grow until after World War II, when residents graduated from the old neighborhood to Cleveland's eastern suburbs. During the last 20 years, however, Little Italy has experienced a rebirth, and today the area combines Old World charm with a vibrant art scene, new housing, and a host of popular restaurants.

Resurrecting the legend of Wyoming's Forgotten Female Militia

In the summer of 1890, an army of teenage women with swords drawn and rifles at the ready marched resolutely toward the state capitol to deliver a message to Governor Francis E. Warren and the nation: women want equal rights. As Company K walked alongside women’s suffrage pioneer Esther Morris, one could hear the rhythm of their feet keeping step in perfect cadence. Western history remembers murderers, outlaws, prostitutes and saloon girls but not the famous Girl Guards, whose military precision rivaled that of West Point cadets.

Author Dan J. Lyon offers the definitive and evocative account of the young women warriors who defined the Equality State.

Anyone who has waited in a Christmas line for the Walnut Room's Great Tree can attest that Chicago's loyalty to Marshall Field's is fierce.

Dayton-Hudson even had to take out advertising around town to apologize for changing the Field's hallowed green bags. And with good reason--the store and those who ran it shaped the city's streets, subsidized its culture and heralded its progress. The resulting commercial empire dictated wholesale tradeterms in Calcutta and sponsored towns in North Carolina, but its essence was always Chicago. So when the Marshall Field name was retired in 2006 after the stores were purchased by Macy's, protest slogans like "Field's is Chicago" and "Field's: as Chicago as it gets" weren't just emotional hype. Many still hope that name will be resurrected like the city it helped support during the Great Fire and the Great Depression. Until then, fans of Marshall Field's can celebrate its history with this warm look back at the beloved institution.

Hula girls, palm trees and Tiki gods beckoned Ohioans of the 1950s and ’60s as tropical hot spots sprang up in suburban neighborhoods and concrete jungles alike.

The Kon Tiki restaurants of Cleveland and Cincinnati slung rum cocktails to patrons eager for escape to a South Seas paradise. Visitors to the famed Kahiki Supper Club of Columbus, the Tropics in Dayton and Toledo’s Aku-Aku could spot celebrities swaying to the exotic sounds of steel guitars and native percussion. Venturing a step beyond restaurants and bars, others decked out theaters, bowling alleys and even a McDonald’s in sultry island décor. Join author and Tiki veteran Jeff Chenault on an excursion into a bygone era when the South Pacific came to Ohio.

The uplifting story of what pioneering Italian immigrants brought to Pittsburgh and how they laid a foundation for future generations to build on and preserve.

By 1930,  one out of every six Pittsburgh residents was an immigrant. More came from Italy than from any other country in the world. Drawn by chain migration and the prospect of work in coal mines, steel mills, railroads, and other local industries, Italian immigrants contributed greatly to the growth and development of western Pennsylvania and endowed the region with a rich and vibrant ethnic culture that has endured to the present day.

In this unprecedented volume, nearly 200 photographs collected from Italian-American families still living in the Pittsburgh region illustrate aspects of the Italian immigrant experience in western Pennsylvania, including work, community, leisure, religion, and family life.