During World War II, Michigan became a temporary home to six thousand German and Italian POWs.

At a time of homefront labor shortages, they picked fruit in Berrien County, harvested sugar beets in the Thumb, cut pulpwood in the Upper Peninsula and maintained parks and other public spaces in Detroit. The work programs were not flawless and not all of the prisoners were cooperative, but many of the men established enduring friendships with their captors. Author Gregory Sumner tells the story of these detainees and the ordinary Americans who embodied our highest ideals, even amid a global war.

Some of the most prominent families of the American Revolution proudly hailed from Connecticut. Committed to the pursuit of freedom, men like Major General David Wooster led troops into battle, while Samuel Huntington and others risked it all by signing the Declaration of Independence. Women might have stayed at home, but they played a vital part by producing goods for soldiers while also taking care of their property and children. In the wake of war, Sarah Pierce started the Litchfield Female Academy and taught proteges like Harriet Beecher Stowe. Family members often enlisted alongside one another. Elijah and David Humphreys were two such brothers who proudly served in the war together. From the Burrs to the Wolcotts, author Mark Allen Baker reveals what life was like for Connecticut families during the Revolutionary War.

In 1778, New York State Patriots forced colonists loyal to the British government to flee north into what became Ontario and Quebec. Many of the defiant young British Americans soon returned south as soldiers, spies and scouts to fight for their multigenerational farms along the Mohawk River, Lake Champlain and Hudson River Valleys. Eventually defeated, they were banished from their ancestral homelands forever. Mark Jodoin offers an enlightened look back at ten young men and women who were forced north into Ontario and Quebec, sharing the struggles these Loyalists faced during our nation's founding.

In December 1780, former Quaker turned general Nathanael Greene took command of the entire Southern Department. He reported only to George Washington himself. Leadership of the southern states to that point in the American Revolution had failed, as the British held all major southern cities, including the important port city of Charleston. Greene faced the British in several key battles in South Carolina in 1781 and ultimately was able to rid the state of the British and free Charleston, but not until 1782, long after the victory at Yorktown. Join author and historian Leigh Moring as she tells the forgotten story of General Nathanael Greene and the liberation of the Lowcountry at the end of the American Revolution.

Discover the people and places of colonial Boston during the tumultuous years of rebellion.

In 1764, a small town in the British colony of Massachusetts ignited a bold rebellion. When Great Britain levied the Sugar Act on its American colonies, Parliament was not prepared for Boston’s backlash.

For the next decade, Loyalists and rebels harried one another as both sides revolted and betrayed, punished and murdered. But the rebel leaders were not always the heroes we consider them today. Samuel Adams and John Hancock were reluctant allies. Paul Revere couldn’t recognize a traitor in his own inner circle. And George Washington dismissed the efforts of the Massachusetts rebels as unimportant.

With a helpful guide to the very sites where the events unfolded, historian Brooke Barbier seeks the truth and human stories behind the myths. Barbier tells the story of how a city radicalized itself against the world’s most powerful empire and helped found the United States of America.