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Sports fans will find the historic photos and stories included in Sports on the Jersey Shore both enlightening and as entertaining as their favorite games. The Jersey Shore region encompasses communities in Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic, and Cape May Counties. It is a region rich in athletics, and since the late 19th century, several athletes from the region have had significant impacts on sports like baseball, swimming, and football, among many others. The Jersey Shore communities have been connected to notable sports figures, including Doc Cramer, Gertrude Ederle, and Vince Lombardi. Over the years, the region has also been a favorite destination for star professional athletes in search of training camps and facilities along New Jersey’s scenic seashore. Athletes, especially boxers and baseball players, have flocked to the Jersey Shore to hone their skills and prepare for some of the biggest events in sports history. 

Matthew H. Ward is a historian and journalist who specializes in sports, the Jersey Shore, and Philadelphia history. He is the coauthor of Boxing in Atlantic City with John DiSanto and The Raritan Bayshore with John Allan Savolaine.

The history of New York is inseparable from the history of sailing on the Hudson River. Beginning with Henry Hudson in 1609 the Dutch and English extended their empires into the Hudson Valley and extracted its bounty via sail. 

Control of the Hudson River was a lynchpin for American victory in the Revolutionary War and New York City's 19th-century rise to global prominence was powered by the sailing vessels on its waterways. Upriver, sloops and schooners delivered goods from the nation's interior and international whaling businesses operated from Hudson and Poughkeepsie and Kingston and Newburgh became noted shipbuilding centers. Yacht racing and ice yachting emerged as popular sports among wealthy families like the Astors and Roosevelts. Sailing clubs preserved these traditions into the 20th century. Since the 1960s, activists including Pete Seeger have used sailboats to galvanize a movement to revive the river ecosystem. Today, the river is home to new generations of sailors continuing these traditions into a fifth century.

Steve Schwartz has sailed and captained numerous sailing and motor vessels on the Hudson River since the 1970s. He and James Malchow are both captains on the Hudson River ferry sloop Woody Guthrie. Images in this book, collected from local libraries, historical societies, the New York State Archives, Library of Congress, and private collections, capture the people, places, and ships that have made the Hudson River an important sailing center for over four centuries.

Haunting stories of the bloodiest single day in American history.

In 1862, the Antietam Battlefield ran red with blood. Spanning the fields, ridges, lanes, and bridge crossings of Sharpsburg, Maryland—from the East Woods and West Woods to Bloody Lane, Burnside Bridge, and the Antietam National Cemetery—more than 160 years of eyewitness accounts, folklore, and unexplained encounters have emerged from that deadly day.

Nearly twenty-three thousand soldiers were recorded as killed, wounded, or missing, and there are many whose spirits reportedly still linger. One is reportedly a spectral drummer boy, often identified as Private Charlie King of the 49th Pennsylvania Volunteers, who was just thirteen years old when he died. General Mansfield is rumored to eternally travel up Smoketown Road, re-creating his final ride before he succumbed to a mortal wound. A ghostly woman in black haunts the Bloody Lane, and shadowy figures can sometimes be seen around Burnside Bridge and the old Piper farm.

Author Mark P. Brugh explores the powerful intersection of history, memory, and the supernatural across one of America’s most storied landscapes.

Celebrate fifty defining moments in Pennsylvania sports history.

Few states in the nation can boast as vibrant and fascinating a sports heritage as Pennsylvania. With the Immaculate Reception, Franco Harris transformed a struggling Steelers franchise into a legendary one. On the other side of the state, the Philadelphia Flyers once struck a symbolic blow during the Cold War by overwhelming CSKA Moscow. The origins of pro football possibly lie in Greensburg, and an NFL title was “stolen” in Pottsville. The greatest college football team no one’s ever heard of hails from Carlisle, and college football’s oldest rivalry still rages between Lafayette and Lehigh. The most dominant performance ever in professional basketball took place in Hershey, where the great Wilt Chamberlain poured in one hundred points in a single game.

Historians David Finoli and Tom Rooney bring these stories—and many more—to life in this thrilling ride through all things sports in the Keystone State. 

Explore the spooky side of Havre de Grace, one of Maryland's most historic towns.

Since its founding in 1785, the historic town of Havre de Grace has weathered its share of tragedy. Over the centuries, loss, hardship, and untold sorrow have left this eighteenth‑century gem alive with restless spirits and unexplained supernatural phenomena. Among the town’s most haunting legends is that of a mysterious woman of the night said to drift silently across the third floor of the American Legion building. Unable to let go after a violent death, a young lady’s spirit roams the State Theater. On foggy nights, strange figures are seen drifting along the waterfront. Lights flicker in buildings untouched by time. And the river—always moving, always murmuring—seems to carry voices from the past.

Step into the shadows with Lisa Unruh-Lopez to explore the chilling stories of Havre de Grace.

Containing stories from the historical record and interviews with today's practitioners, Maryland Witchcraft has a little something for the history buff, the modern wiccan, and the merely curious alike.

In the dark history of witchcraft in America, other states dominate the popular mind, but Maryland, too, has blood on its hands.

Found guilty of witchcraft, Rebecca Fowler met her death by hanging. If she had been accused in a different colony, the end would perhaps have been different, but in Maryland, witchcraft meant death. The end was not so quick for Moll Dyer. Chased out of her house by fearful neighbors, she fled into the bitter winter night. Facing similar accusations, Hannah Edwards and Virtue Violl stood trial but escaped such a dire fate.

Drawing on stories of ancient witchcraft and shamanism and accounts of European witch trials, author Trish Hoffman unfolds the history of Maryland witches from the colonial era to the present day.