Social Science

On November 28, 1942, fire roared through Boston’s famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub during what was supposed to be a high-spirited Saturday night. By midnight, more than five hundred people were dead, dying, or maimed for life.

Local author Stephanie Schorow probes the club’s history, the circumstances leading to the fire, and the tragedy’s lingering impact. The inferno reached deep into the city’s social structure––its politics, medical care, law enforcement, and religious life––and touched nearly everyone in the Boston area, even those who had never set foot in the club. In this newly updated and revised edition, Schorow has added new information, photographs, interviews and insights on the worst nightclub fire in American history.

During the early twentieth century, Sicilian and Southern Italian immigrants poured into New York City.

Looking to escape poverty and persecution at home, they soon discovered that certain criminal enterprises followed them to America. Before any codes of honor were established in the New World, violent bosses wreaked havoc on their communities in their quest to rule the underworld. It took several decades for the Mafia to mature into a contemporary organized crime syndicate. Some names and places from both eras are still infamous today, like Frank Costello and the Copacabana, while some have remained hidden in absolute secrecy until now. Walk in their footsteps as New York City author Eric Ferrara explores the myths and realities of one of America's most feared and fascinating subjects.

In 1980, a record-breaking thunderstorm unleashed a disastrous amount of water on the tiny town of Brady’s Bend.

In a mere forty minutes, the community was annihilated by a catastrophic flash flood. Residents ran for their lives, and nine people drowned. Although rescue and recovery soon followed, the harrowing experience left a mark on the survivors that remains decades later.

Author and Brady’s Bend native Lisa Olszak Zumstein tells this community’s story in full and reveals how this devastating storm mirrors numerous others in the Appalachian corridor.

Island Escapes, South Seas Adventures, and Musical Surf Parties of Midcentury Cinema

Tiki Culture arose as the defining expression of American pop culture during World War II and its influence continued through the 1960s. The essence of Tiki featured heavily in films of the era, depicting palm-tree and cocktail-laden escapes that captivated audiences nationwide. Films like South Pacific and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit were a hodgepodge of jungle imagery and World War II Pacific theater memories. A fascination with the new State of Hawaii was reflected in Elvis’s Blue Hawaii, while balmy youth flicks like Beach Blanket Bingo and Gidget showcased surf, sun and fun.

Join authors Jason Henderson and Adam Foshko as they explore films about the experiences of war filtered through the tropical splendor that defined an era.

Yuletide in the Motor City

No city seems to love Christmas as much as Detroit. Whether at Hudson’s, or sitting at the Fox Theatre, or seeing the hundreds of dolls and live reindeer at the famous Rotunda, the city can’t get enough of the holiday season. Detroiters have been celebrating Christmas for over 300 years, when the city was French and children waited for Pere Noel. As holiday traditions evolve, some endure, like Christmas trees and children writing letters to Santa. Some, such as meat pie and saying 1,000 Hail Marys for good luck, fade, and new ones—Santa at the Thanksgiving Day Parade—take their place.

Local history writer Bill Loomis leads a very merry jaunt through the happiest days of Christmas in Detroit.

Explore the dark and mysterious past of New Orleans with this riveting collection of tales that devle into the most haunted city in America.

New Orleans--the Big Easy, the birthplace of jazz, home of Cafe du Monde and what some call the most haunted city in America. Beneath the indulgence and revelry of the Crescent City lies a long history of the dark and mysterious. From the famous Queen of Voodoo, Marie Laveau, who is said to haunt the site of her grave, to the wicked LaLauries, whose true natures were hidden behind elegance and the trappings of high society, New Orleans is filled with spirits of all kinds. Some of the ghosts in these stories have sordid and scandalous histories, while others are friendly specters who simply can't leave their beloved city behind. Join supernatural historian Troy Taylor as he takes readers beyond the French Quarter and shows a side of New Orleans never seen.

Author Kathy Benjamin accompanies the pioneering women of the Lone Star State’s funeral business. The intimate task of caring for the dead had long fallen under women’s sphere of responsibilities. But after the Civil War, the sudden popularity of embalming offered new financial opportunities to men who set up as undertakers, pushing women out of their traditional role. In Texas, from the 1880s to the 1930s, women slowly regained their place by the bier. Many worked while pregnant or raising children. Most shouldered the additional weight of personal tragedies and persistent sexism. All brought comfort to the bereaved in the isolation of the Texas frontier, kept its cities free of deadly disease and revolutionized an industry that was just coming into its own.

Author Janis Thornton reveals the stories of a day in Indiana like no other.

Palm Sunday 1965 started as the nicest day of the year, the kind of weather that encouraged Hoosiers to get out in the sun, fire up the grill, hit the golf course, or roll down their car windows and take a leisurely drive. That evening, however, throughout northern and central Indiana, the sky turned an ominous black, and storms moved in, quickly manifesting as Indiana's worst tornado outbreak. Within three hours, twisters, some a half-mile wide, ripped through seventeen counties, devastating communities and leaving death and destruction in their wake. When the tornadoes were finished with Indiana, 137 people were dead, hundreds were injured, and thousands more were forever changed.

The full account of the 18th-century hanging of a school teacher is detailed in detailed in Carolyn Marvin's dramatic tale.

On a cold December morning in 1768, thirty-one-year-old Ruth Blay approached the gallows erected for her execution. Standing on the high ground in the northwest corner of what is now Portsmouth's old South Cemetery, she would have had a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea. The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth's story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth's life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth's moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her readers come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.

Chicago Heights was long the seat of one of the major street crews of the Chicago Outfit, but its importance has often been overlooked and misunderstood.

The crew's origins predate Prohibition, when Chicago Heights was a developing manufacturing center with a large Italian immigrant population. Its earliest bosses struggled for control until a violent gang war left the crew solidified under the auspices of Al Capone. For the remainder of the twentieth century, the boys from Chicago Heights generated large streams of revenue for the Outfit through its vast gambling enterprises, union infiltration and stolen auto rackets. For the first time, the history of the Chicago Heights street crew is traced from its inception through its last known boss.

Follow Archaeologist Darla Spencer as she discovers the history and habits of 16 Native American sites in West Virginia.

Once thought of as Indian hunting grounds with no permanent inhabitants, West Virginia is teeming with evidence of a thriving early native population. Today's farmers can hardly plow their fields without uncovering ancient artifacts, evidence of at least ten thousand years of occupation. Members of the Fort Ancient culture resided along the rich bottomlands of southern West Virginia during the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods. Lost to time and rediscovered in the 1880s, Fort Ancient sites dot the West Virginia landscape. This volume explores sixteen of these sites, including Buffalo, Logan and Orchard. Archaeologist Darla Spencer excavates the fascinating lives of some of the Mountain State's earliest inhabitants in search of who these people were, what languages they spoke and who their descendants may be.

Boston journalists Beverly Ford and Stephanie Schorow navigate the backrooms and seedy hangouts throughout the real story of Boston's gangster past.

The capture of notorious mobster James Whitey Bulger closed an infamous chapter in Boston history, yet the city's criminal underworld has a long and bloody rap sheet that stretches back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Ford and Schorow reveal the underbelly of Boston through profiles of ruthless gangsters like Charles King Solomon, the Angiulo brothers, Joseph The Animal Barboza, Stephen The Rifleman Flemmi and many more who carried out deadly hits and lucrative heists.

Take a tour of Buffalo, NY's mobster and mafia history. Local mob expert reveals gangsters' stories, hangouts and more.

Buffalo has housed its fair share of thugs and mobsters. Besides common criminals and bank robbers, a powerful crime family headed by local boss Stefano Magaddino emerged in the 1920s. Close to Canada, Niagara Falls and Buffalo were perfect avenues through which to transport booze, and Magaddino and his Mafiosi maintained a stranglehold on the city until his death in 1974. Local mob expert Michael Rizzo takes a tour of Buffalo's mafia exploits everything from these brutal gangsters' favorite hangouts to secret underground tunnels to murder.

For over 400 years, the mystery of Roanoke’s “Lost Colony” has puzzled historians and spawned conspiracies—until now.

New discoveries link the lost colony of Roanoke to Hatteras Island

The legend of the Lost Colony has been captivating imaginations for nearly a century. When they left Roanoke Island, where did they go? What is the meaning of the mysterious word Croatoan? When they left Roanoke Island, where did they go? What is the meaning of the mysterious word Croatoan? In the sixteenth century, Croatoan was the name of an island to the south now known as Hatteras. Scholars have long considered the island as one of the colonists’ possible destinations, but only recently has anyone set out to prove it. Archaeologists from the University of Bristol, working with local residents through the Croatoan Archaeological Society, have uncovered tantalizing clues to the fate of the colony.

Hatteras native and amateur archaeologist Scott Dawson compiles what scholars know about the Lost Colony along with what scholars have found beneath the soil of Hatteras.

In the wake of a love affair and a mysterious chain of events, Tom Dooley was convicted and hanged for the murder of Laura Foster.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Wilkes County, North Carolina, was the site of this nationally publicized crime of passion, the nation's first. This notorious crime became an inspiration for musicians, writers and storytellers ever since, creating a mystery of mythic proportions. Through newspaper articles, trial documents and public records, Dr. John E. Fletcher brings this dramatic case to life, providing the long-awaited factual account of the legendary murder. Join the investigation into one of the country's most enduring thrillers.

Centuries ago, Europeans desperate for gold and a route to the East found a lush, green paradise populated by native tribes in the New World.

Subsequent violence and disease all but wiped out the native population. The land nurtured Charlton Heston and Ernest Hemingway in their youths and spawned the assassin of President William McKinley. Northern Michigan also bore witness to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history, and to the bizarre kidnapping of Gayle Cook, an ill-fated attempt to save the Perry Hotel in Petoskey from bankruptcy. Author and storyteller Dave Rogers recounts these and other historical tales from Up North.

Discover a remarkably intimate and compelling view of the riots with stories of individuals on both sides of the conflict that rocked Kensington.

The outskirts of Philadelphia seethed with tension in the spring of 1844. By May 6, the situation between the newly arrived Irish Catholics and members of the anti-immigrant Nativist Party took an explosively violent turn. When the Irish asked to have their children excused from reading the Protestant version of the Bible in local public schools, the nativists held a protest. The Irish pushed back. For three days, riots scorched the streets of Kensington. Though the immigrants first had the upper hand, the nativists soon put the community to the torch. Those who fled were shot. Two Catholic churches burned to the ground, along with several blocks of houses, stores, a nunnery and a Catholic school. Local historian Kenneth W. Milano traces this tumultuous history from the preceding hostilities through the bloody skirmishes and finally to the aftermath of arrests and trials.

Social scientist and crime writer James A. Buccellato explores Detroit's struggle with gang violence, public corruption and the politics of vice during the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century.

Though detectives denied it, the Italian mafia was operating in Detroit as early as 1900, and the city was forever changed. Bootleggers controlled the Detroit River and created a national distribution network for illegal booze during Prohibition. Gangsters, cops and even celebrities fell victim to the violence. Some politicians and prominent businessmen like Henry Ford's right-hand man, Harry Bennett, collaborated closely with the mafia, while others, such as popular radio host Gerald Buckley, fought back and lost their lives.

Local storyteller Jonathan Kruk shares the mysterious lore of the Hudson Valley, best known among them Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." 

This exciting volume and its author has been featured in the Travel Channel's "Mysteries at the Museum," and helped establish the galloping goblin's origin story.

The story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is one of America's best known fables, but what other stories does the Hudson Valley hold? Imps cause mischief on the Hudson River, a white lady haunts Raven Rock, Major Andre's ghost seeks redemption and real headless Hessians search for their severed skulls. These mysterious and spooky tales from the region's past that inspired Irving and continues to captivate the imagination to this day.

Through firsthand accounts, interviews with survivors and a gripping collection of vintage photographs, author Michael Skidgell attempts to make sense of one of Hartford's worst tragedies.

Almost 7,000 fans eagerly packed into the Ringling Brothers big top on July 6, 1944. With a single careless act, an afternoon at the Greatest Show on Earth quickly became one of terror and tragedy as the paraffin-coated circus tent caught fire. Panicked crowds rushed for the few exits, but in minutes, the tent collapsed on those still struggling to escape below. A total of 168 lives were lost, many of them children, with many more injured and forever scarred by the events. Hartford and the surrounding communities reeled in the aftermath as investigators searched for the source of the fire and the responsible parties.

A Dark History Revealed

In the early twentieth century, eugenics was at the forefront of scientific discourse in the quest to understand human genetics. On Long Island and throughout the nation, eugenicists were granted unfettered access to conduct experiments on prisoners, psychiatric patients, Coney Island circus performers and more, all in an effort to legitimize a false science. The origins of the eugenics movement can be found within the Eugenics Record Office, an otherwise nondescript two-and-a-half-story administrative building at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, under the direction of Charles Benedict Davenport from 1910 to 1939. The work conducted there directly led to the forced sterilization of thousands of American citizens and the passage of anti-immigration laws and sparked a deadly global movement.

Author Mark Torres explores the local characters, influences, landmarks and ghastly consequences that emanated from this small Long Island facility for decades and spread throughout the world.

The fascinating story behind California’s mid-twentieth century obsession with all things Polynesian and Hawaiian.

After World War II, suburbs proliferated around California cities as returning soldiers traded in their uniforms for business suits. After-hours leisure activities took on an island-themed sensuality that bloomed from a new fascination with Polynesia and Hawaii. Movies and television shows filmed in Malibu and Burbank urged viewers to escape everyday life with the likes of Elvis, Gidget, and Hawaiian Eye. Restaurants like Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s sprang up to answer the demand for wild cocktails and even wilder décor.

A strange hodgepodge of idols, lush greenery and colorful drinks, Tiki beckoned men and women to lose themselves in exotic music and surf tunes. Authors Jason Henderson and Adam Foshko take a trip back in time to the scene of Polynesian pop and three decades of palm trees, Mai Tais, and torches with this informal guide to the rise, fall, and resurgence of Tiki culture.

Forgotten History in the Tar Heel State

Take an adventure through ruins of ghost towns and lost communities in the Old North State. Explore isolated settlements like Lost Cove, hidden so deep in the mountains that no roads reach it. Ferry out to Portsmouth Island, where a ghost town has withstood multiple wars and generations of hurricanes. Explore the ruins of Brunswick Town, a port community of secret rebels destroyed in the Revolutionary War as punishment for “treason” against the British. Visit decaying remains in Snow Camp, a community that sheltered freedom seekers in the Underground Railroad.

Author Heather Leah details the lost and forgotten towns of North Carolina.

Chronicling the devastating Strand Theatre Fire of 1941 and celebrating the community's heroes and resilience in the face of adversity.

On March 10, 1941, at 12:38 a.m., the Brockton Fire Department responded to Fire Alarm Box 1311, which was pulled for a fire at the Strand Theatre. Fire Alarm dispatched the deputy chief, three engine companies, a ladder company and Squad A. Within six minutes, a second alarm was struck. Less than one hour after the first alarm, the roof of the Strand collapsed, and what appeared to be a routine fire turned into a disaster that killed 13 firefighters and injured more than 20 others. The disaster marks one of the largest losses of life to firefighters from a burning building collapse in the United States.

Cleveland’s neighborhood taverns are more than just places to grab a drink—they’re snapshots of the city’s history, rich with tales of community, celebration and even scandal.

Built by hardworking immigrants chasing the American Dream, these taverns were where workers cashed their paychecks, swapped stories, celebrated victories and sometimes witnessed late-night crimes. Family-run bars were often passed down through generations, becoming intertwined with the ever-changing face of the city. Although many did not survive the 1960s and ’70s, their memory lives on.

Native Clevelander and founder of My Cleveland History Tom Kaschalk honors the legendary watering holes that shaped Cleveland’s communities, hosted vibrant music scenes and served as the backdrop to both good times and life-changing events.

At 11:37 p.m. on August   17, 1959, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake rocked Montana's Yellowstone country.

In an instant, an entire mountainside fractured and thundered down onto the sites of unsuspecting campers. The mammoth avalanche generated hurricane-force winds ahead of it that ripped clothing from backs and heaved tidal waves in both directions of the Madison River Canyon. More than two hundred vacationers trapped in the canyon feared the dam upstream would burst. As debris and flooding overwhelmed the river, injured victims frantically searched the darkness for friends and family.

Acclaimed historian Larry Morris tells the gripping minute-by-minute saga of the survivors who endured the interminable night, the first responders who risked their lives and the families who waited days and weeks for word of their missing loved ones.

Explore the traditional tales of the hills and hollers of southwestern Virginia.

From the infamous Black Sisters of Christiansburg to the ghost of the famed Barter Theatre in Abingdon, the region is filled with stories that have haunted residents for decades. The Woodbooger, a local Bigfoot, is said to roam the mountainsides which are also home to many eccentric and inspiring legendary characters, including Molly Tynes, Reverend Robert Sheffey, Napoleon Hill and Cedar Creek Charlie.

Authors Melody West and Shane Simmons uncover tales of unique people and places that have seldom been told.

Uncover the full extent of mayhem and madness locked away in one of history's most notorious maximum-security prisons.

As animal factories go, the Ohio Penitentiary was one of the worst. For 150 years, it housed some of the most dangerous criminals in the United States, including murderers, madmen and mobsters. Peer in on America's first vampire, accused of sucking his victims' blood five years before Bram Stoker's fictional villain was even born; peek into the cage of the original Prison Demon; and witness the daring escape of John Hunt Morgan's band of Confederate prisoners.

Schuylkill County is no stranger to disaster.

Schuylkill County is no stranger to disaster. Protected by volunteers since 1811, residents have faced block-burning conflagrations like the Great Memorial Day Fire of 1945, which consumed sixty-seven buildings in the Mahanoy City Business District, and commercial airplane crashes like United Flight 624 near Ashland, with no survivors. The Red Church propane truck explosion near Orwigsburg caused twelve fatalities, and the Reading Railroad passenger train collision with a gasoline truck in Port Carbon sparked death and destruction, as well as a frantic search for burning money.

Telling these stories with the help of rare and many never-before-seen images, authors and veteran firefighters Michael R. Glore and Michael J. Kitsock revisit some of the region’s most harrowing catastrophes.

“Stories of immigration, culture-clash . . . and old-fashioned hard work are told through the history of Houston’s long-gone, but still-beloved restaurants.” —Yesterday’s America

With more than fourteen thousand eating establishments covering seventy different ethnic cuisines, Houston is a foodie town. But even in a place where eating out is a way of life and restaurants come and go, there were some iconic spots that earned a special place in the hearts and stomachs of locals.

Maxim’s taught overnight millionaires how to handle meals that came with three forks. The Trader Vic’s at the Shamrock offered dedicated homebodies a chance for the exotic, and Sonny Look’s Sirloin Inn maintained the reputation of a city of steakhouses.

From Alfred’s Delicatessen to Youngblood’s Fried Chicken, Paul and Christiane Galvani celebrate the stories and recipes of Houston’s fondly remembered tastemakers.

“In the book, the Galvanis share Houston’s history and love of food. They take the reader on the banks of the bayou when the city received its first inhabitants before time hopping from the Original Mexican Restaurant to The Original Kelley’s Steakhouse. Other stops include Alfred’s Delicatessen and the San Jacinto Inn.” —Houston Business Journal

Follow the tragic story of a fishing trip gone wrong and its impact on the community of Brockton, Massachusetts.

On May 13, 1928, ten prominent men of Brockton, Massachusetts, headed off on a fishing trip to Moosehead Lake in Maine. After traveling fourteen hours, the group met Maine guide Samuel Budden and boarded the Mac II for the final voyage to their destination. Approximately six miles from the Tomhegan sporting camp, the boat took on water in rough seas and sank, taking Budden and all but one of the adventurers to a watery grave. Jim Benson and Nicole Casper chronicle this horrific tragedy and its legacy in two New England communities.

Author Orice Jenkins tells the full story of Ulysses Goolsby and the Early County massacre more than 100 years later. The Early County Massacre has been known as the Grandison Goolsby War for over a century, focusing on the events of December 30th, 1915, when 46-year-old Grandison used gunfire to defend himself from a lynching mob. Lesser known is that the incident started two days earlier when Grandison’s son was attacked on his way to a wedding, and that it all led to the Supreme Court of Georgia sending that same son to death row five years later.

The story of Raleigh’s African American communities begins before the Civil War.

Towns like Oberlin Village were built by free people of color in the antebellum era. During Reconstruction, the creation of thirteen freedmen’s villages defined the racial boundaries of Raleigh. These neighborhoods demonstrate the determination and resilience of formerly enslaved North Carolinians. After World War II, new suburbs sprang up, telling tales of the growth and struggles of the Black community under Jim Crow. Many of these communities endure today. Dozens of never before published pictures and maps illustrate this hidden history.

Local historian Carmen Wimberly Cauthen tells the story of a people who—despite slavery—wanted to learn, grow, and be treated as any others.

Few people know the story of how the Invisible Empire once invaded the Heart of America.

The Ku Klux Klan kicked off a nationwide revival in 1921 and took Kansas City, Kansas, by storm. The majority white population—alarmed by the influx of immigrants, Catholics and Jews—joined the Klan in thousands. The Klan held picnics drawing crowds of twenty-five thousand and parades up Minnesota Avenue with thousands of Klansmen, electric lights and robed horses. They also intimidated African Americans, vandalized Catholic cemeteries and censored “offensive” books from public library shelves. Its members fed a political machine, electing more than one hundred Klansmen to local offices, from district attorney to mayor. Author Tim Rives shares this troubled and little-known story, where the men of the Klan’s inner circle ruled the city for nearly thirty years.

The Deadliest Twister in U.S. History

The weather forecast for much of the Midwest on March 18, 1925, predicted “Wind and rain.” This prediction was right, but lethally inadequate. Around 1 p.m., a tornado touched down near Ellington, Missouri, and charged relentlessly for three and a half hours across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. The destructive storm left schools and workplaces leveled, over 600 dead and 1,600 injured in its two-hundred-nineteen-mile wake—earning it the name, the Great American Tornado. A nation united, doctors and nurses rushed aboard express trains. The Red Cross orchestrated an enduring six-month relief campaign, and people contributed funds and condolences from around the world. Amidst the staggering ruin, volunteers, the Red Cross, and ordinary heroes like Isaac Levy spearheaded awe-inspiring recovery efforts that rivaled the powerful storm.

Digging into a forgotten past – and the dead left behind.

San Francisco is famous for not having any cemeteries, but the claim isn’t exactly what it seems. In the early 20th Century, the city relocated more than 150,000 graves to the nearby town of Colma to make way for a rapidly growing population. But an estimated fifty to sixty thousand burials were quietly built over and forgotten, only to resurface every time a new building project began. The dead still lie beneath some of the city’s most cherished destinations, including the Legion of Honor, United Nations Plaza, the Asian Art Museum and the University of San Francisco.

Join author Beth Winegarner as she maps the city's early burial grounds and brings back to life the dead who've been erased.

In many ways, the story of bondage in Virginia is the story of the state itself...

Richmond's 15th Street was known as Wall Street in antebellum times, and like its New York counterpart, it was a center of commerce. But the business done here was unspeakable and the scene heart wrenching. With over sixty-nine slave dealers and auction houses, the Wall Street area saw tens of millions of dollars and countless human lives change hands, fueling the southern economy. Local historian and author Jack Trammell traces the history of the city's slave trade, from the origins of African slavery in Virginia to its destruction at the end of the Civil War. Stories of seedy slave speculators and corrupt traders are placed alongside detailed accounts of the economic, political and cultural impact of a system representing the most immense, concentrated human suffering in our nation's history.

The native tribes collectively known as the Abenaki once thrived along the Granite State’s great rivers.

Comprised of the Penacook, Winnipesaukee, Pigwacket, Sokoki, Cowasuck, and Ossipee tribes, influences of these “men of the east” abound even today, from the boiling of sap for maple syrup to the game of lacrosse, and even traditional corn-and-bean succotash. Historian Bruce Heald has mined, curated, and saved the real story of this land’s first people. Learn unwritten laws of hospitality, respect for the aged, honesty, independence and courtesy evident among the Abenaki. Discover celebrations and innovations in the good times, and later, epidemics caused by European diseases, hostilities, and a culture’s enduring legacy.

In 1604, when Frenchmen landed on Saint Croix Island, they were far from the first people to walk along its shores.

For thousands of years, Etchemins—whose descendants were members of the Wabanaki Confederacy—had lived, loved and labored in Down East Maine. Bound together with neighboring people, all of whom relied heavily on canoes for transportation, trade and survival, each group still maintained its own unique cultures and customs. After the French arrived, they faced unspeakable hardships, from the Great Dying, when disease killed up to 90 percent of coastal populations, to centuries of discrimination. Yet they never abandoned Ketakamigwa, their homeland. In this book, anthropologist William Haviland relates the history of hardship and survival endured by the natives of the Down East coast and how they have maintained their way of life over the past four hundred years.

Based on Corey Geiger's popular Homesteader's Hope column, On a Wisconsin Family Farm flings the barn doors wide open to a cast of characters who built America's Dairyland.

In 1905, twenty-eight-year-old Anna Satorie, granddaughter of Bohemian immigrants, went against cultural norms and became the sole owner of her family's homestead when she purchased the farm from her father. The next year, Anna married neighboring farmer John Burich, also of Bohemian extraction, and the couple went about building a thrifty family farm. But pioneer life was fraught with trials and tribulations. Polio and tuberculosis claimed loved ones, and the difficulties of Prohibition forced the family to fabricate the death of John's bootlegging brother to keep gangsters away from the farm. Neighbors pitched in as fellow immigrant families helped construct farmsteads and support one another through unsanctioned bank loans, daring dynamite work, and barn raisings. Leaving work aside, this vibrant community also threw parties met by the rooster's early-dawn crow.

Pairing his rural roots with lively storytelling, Geiger captures six generations of farming, family, and faith.

Circle City Catastrophes/

Disaster was a fact of everyday life in 1800s and early 1900s Indianapolis. During the 1860s, more than 1,700 people died in what is now the Herron-Morton Place neighborhood. In 1882, ten people drowned under the Union Railroad Depot. Ropes were considered an adequate fire escape in the 1890s, but when the National Surgical Institute caught fire, they proved unequal to the task. The owners of the Prest-O-Lite Company created the world-famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but their company also had four major incidents that caused eleven deaths and destruction in the city. In 1917, Hollywood was responsible for the deaths of six people in an Indianapolis apartment building. Join Jack Finney as he explores these and other Indianapolis fires and disasters./ 

Join Jack Finney as he explores these and other Indianapolis fires and disasters./ 

Pry into the secrets of the stunning mountains of Virginia.

A nineteenth century cache of gold is buried in the hills. Nine-foot giants once walked the ridges of the Shenandoah, pre-Columbian explorers built homes on isolated mountaintops and a ghost town lies deep in the Jefferson National Forest. Virginia’s mountains conceal canines that walk upright, black panthers and a resurgent mountain lion population. The hide-and-seek champion of the world, Bigfoot, lurks in the dark hollows, phantom dogs pace the backroads and aggressive monkeys swing through the trees. UFOs crisscross the skies and ghosts haunt the caverns below.

Join Denver Michaels, local author and expert in the unexplained, as he explores these mysteries and many more.

Fear, rumor and white supremacist ideals clashed with an unprecedented labor action spawned an epic tragedy.

On November 23, 1887, white vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families due to strikes on Louisiana sugar cane plantations. A future member of the U.S. House of Representatives was among the leaders of a mob that routed black men from houses and forced them to a stretch of railroad track, ordering them to run for their lives before gunning them down. According to a witness, the guns firing in the black neighborhoods sounded like a battle. Author and award-winning reporter John DeSantis uses correspondence, interviews and federal records to detail this harrowing true story.

On March 14, 1940, a train heading west along Highway 83 from Donna to Alamo struck a truck driver turning north from the highway onto Tower Road. The horrific crash killed twenty-nine of about forty-five farmworkers who were on the truck. A one-day investigation faulted the truck driver and led to meager court settlements for the devastated families. In the wake of these events, several of the victims’ children and grandchildren became lawyers and some of the first Mexican American judges in South Texas. Juan Carmona and Taylor Seaver De La Fuente revisit the deadliest traffic accident in Texas history, while seeking to preserve the stories of Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers and their relatives whose backbreaking contributions continue to feed our country to this day.

Bomber Mountain's Namesake Tragedy

June 1943 saw forty-one heavy bombers lost within the continental United States, including a B-17 that went missing over Wyoming late during the night of June 28. That aircraft had ten young men on board destined for World War II. They had been ordered overseas to participate in the intense and constant bombing raids being conducted in Europe, but they never made it out of America. Two years later, area cowboys discovered the wreckage strewn across an otherwise picturesque landscape. U.S. Air Corps Captain Kenneth G. Hamm noted in his personal diary, “The plane was so completely demolished that we were almost on top of it before we saw it.” Author Sylvia A. Bruner shares the stories of the men who lost their lives deep in the Bighorn Mountains and recounts the events of the crash, search and U.S. Air Corps accident investigation.

Faced with decades of land theft, New Mexicans seek justice.

When the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed previous Spanish and Mexican land grants, as well as rights for Native Americans to their ancestral homelands. However, organized property theft began soon after. People were methodically dispossessed of their homes through manipulation, conspiracy and even organized crime rings, leading to widespread poverty and isolation. Then in 1967, the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse Raid, led by charismatic civil rights leader Reies López Tijerina, brought the age-old struggle over these stolen lands to the national stage. Author Ray John de Aragón brings to light the suffering brought to New Mexico by land barons, cattlemen and unscrupulous politicians and the effects still felt today.

Author Shane Simmons explores tales of bravery, lore and bizarre customs within the East Tennessee region.

The mountains of East Tennessee are chock full of unique folklore passed down through generations. Locals spin age-old yarns of legends like Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Dragging Canoe. Stories of snake-handling churches and the myths behind the death crown superstitions dot the landscape. The mysteries surrounding the Sensabaugh Tunnel still haunt residents.

Authors Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler chart the brief rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how New Jersey collectively stood up to bigotry.

The state, though, was not immune to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the first half of the twentieth century. Former vaudevillians Arthur H. Bell and his wife used the tactics of public theater to advertise and recruit for the organization. At a massive riot in Perth Amboy, thousands of immigrants besieged a few hundred Klansmen, tossed them out of building windows, burned their cars and ran them out of town. The allying of pro-Nazi German Bund groups and the Klan in the lead-up to World War II marked the end of the Klan’s foothold. Authors Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler chart the brief rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how New Jersey collectively stood up to bigotry.

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.

A history of the division among state leaders surrounding secession, and those who opposed it before the Civil War.

This book tells the story of those state leaders in North Carolina who remained loyal to the Union, because they saw the potential for compromise with Northern states. William Alexander Graham helped broker the Compromise of 1850. John Motley Morehead and Jonathan Worth led the campaign against secession in early 1861.

Most, though, continued to serve their state under the Confederacy—even though Zebulon B. Vance opposed secession, he served in the Confederate army and as governor of the state during the Civil War.

Historian Steve M. Miller introduces the Tar Heel Unionists who bravely fought to steer their state away from the disastrous future they foresaw.

Ghostly travelers are said to wander the lonely roads of western Pennsylvania. Is it the angry spirit of a jealous husband or a gypsy king who stalks Erie County's Axe Murder Hollow?

A creeping fog rises from Blue Mist Road, and stories of car crashes, lynchings and even strange beasts haunt this isolated stretch outside Pittsburgh. Shades of Death Road in Washington County may be host to phantom coal miners killed during a deadly labor dispute. With firsthand accounts and historical research, authors Thomas White and Tony Lavorgne travel the backcountry roads and byways of western Pennsylvania to discover their ghost tales and mysterious legends.

Author William Thibodeaux shares a bevy of Cajun Country tales .

From shocking one offs to delightful immersion into the quotidian lives of Cajuns long deceased, we find ourselves with a satisfying grab bag of Cajun history. A murder becomes a case that winds its all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A feud erupts into a shootout on election day 1924 with three dead and four injured. One ordinary Cajun is torn between two passion - photography and railroading. Another young man rises to the rank of postmaster. Cajun music is reborn in these pages, and the university in Lafayette is founded. The legality of the Louisiana Purchase comes under scrutiny here, and communities lost to the great floor of 1927 are remembered, as is the once unthinkable banning of the French language on public-school grounds. During the yellow fever epidemic, one town tries to save itself by banning all inbound trains from NOLA. Another city in the region is befallen by a curse placed on its boundaries.

Through a fascinating narrative and stunning vintage photographs, readers will discover the struggles and triumphs of the African Americans of Hampton Roads.

It was in Hampton Roads, Virginia, that hundreds gained their freedom. The teeming wharves were once a major station on the Underground Railroad, and during the Civil War, escaped slaves such as Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker and James Townsend fled to Fort Monroe to become contrabands under the protection of General Benjamin Butler. Upon arrival in the region, many took up arms for the Union, and the valiant deeds of some placed them among the first African American Medal of Honor recipients. Join Professor Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander as she charts the history of this remarkable African American community from the Civil War to Reconstruction.

Slavery is a tragic chapter in the history of Wilkes County with a lasting legacy. Prominent businessmen and celebrated civic leaders, like General William Lenoir and William Pitt Waugh, were among the county's largest slaveholders. Judith Williams Barber endured forty-five years of slavery and garnered respect from both white and black residents. Her story is linked to free person of color and noted landowner Henderson Waugh, whose illustrious, slaveholding white father connected the two families—one slave and the other free. Author Larry Griffin takes readers on an emotional journey to separate fact from myth as he chronicles the history of slavery in Wilkes County.

 Prominent businessmen and celebrated civic leaders, like General William Lenoir and William Pitt Waugh, were among the county's largest slaveholders. Judith Williams Barber endured forty-five years of slavery and garnered respect from both white and black residents. Her story is linked to free person of color and noted landowner Henderson Waugh, whose illustrious, slaveholding white father connected the two families—one slave and the other free. Author Larry Griffin takes readers on an emotional journey to separate fact from myth as he chronicles the history of slavery in Wilkes County.

During World War II, no American city suffered a worse housing shortage than Detroit, and no one suffered that shortage more than the city's African American citizens.

In 1941, the federal government began constructing the Sojourner Truth Housing Project in northeast Detroit to house 200 black war production workers and their families. Almost immediately, whites in the neighborhood vehemently protested. On February 28, 1942, a confrontation between black tenants and white protesters erupted in a riot that sent at least 40 to the hospital and more than 220 to jail. This confrontation was the precursor to the bloodiest race riot of the war just sixteen months later.

Gerald Van Dusen, author of 2020 Michigan Notable Books nominee Detroit's Birwood Wall, unfolds the background and events of this overlooked moment in Motor City history.

Author and journalist Cody McDevitt tells the story of one of the worst civil rights injustices in Western Pennsylvania history.

In 1923, in response to the fatal shooting of four policemen, the mayor of Johnstown ordered every African American and Mexican immigrant who had lived in the city for less than seven years to leave. They were given less than a day to move or would face crippling fines or jail time and were forced out at gunpoint. An estimated two thousand people uprooted their lives in response to the racist edict. Area Ku Klux Klan members celebrated the creation of a “sundown town” and increased their own intimidation practices. Figures such as Marcus Garvey spoke out in Pittsburgh against it as newspapers throughout the country published condemnations.

Georgia archeologist Lisa Russell reveals the mysterious world that disappeared under North Georgia’s man-made lakes in this fascinating history.

North Georgia has more than forty lakes, and not one is natural. The state’s controversial decision to dam the region’s rivers for power and water supply changed the landscape forever. Lost communities, forgotten crossroads, dissolving racetracks and even entire towns disappeared, with remnants occasionally peeking up from the depths during times of extreme drought.

The creation of Lake Lanier displaced more than seven hundred families. During the construction of Lake Chatuge, busloads of schoolboys were brought in to help disinter graves for the community’s cemetery relocation. Contractors clearing land for the development of Lake Hartwell met with seventy-eight-year-old Eliza Brock wielding a shotgun and warning the men off her property.

Authors Emily Ford and Barry Stiefel delve into the Jewish communities settled in New Orleans and along the Mississippi Delta.

The early days of Louisiana settlement brought with them a clandestine group of Jewish pioneers. Isaac Monsanto and other traders spited the rarely enforced Code Noir banning their occupancy, but it wasn't until the Louisiana Purchase that larger numbers colonized the area. Immigrants like the Sartorius brothers and Samuel Zemurray made their way from Central and Eastern Europe to settle the bayou country along the Mississippi. They made their homes in and around New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, establishing congregations like that of Tememe Derech and B'Nai Israel, with the mighty river serving as a mode of transportation and communication, connecting the communities on both sides of the riverbank.

Claiming the lives of seven adults and seventeen children, the Belvidere tornado struck the most vulnerable at the worst possible time: just as school let out. More than five hundred people suffered injuries.

New interviews and fascinating archival history underscore the horrific drama, as well as the split-second decisions of victims and survivors that saved their families and neighbors. Since the tragedy, three more devastating tornadoes have further defined Boone County's resilience: Poplar Grove in 2008, Caledonia in 2010 and Fairdale in 2015.

This fascinating collection of myths, legends and folktales celebrates the diversity of characters and cultures across the Sunshine State.

Florida boasts mysterious tales that stretch back more than twelve thousand years. In Florida Lore, storyteller Caren Schnur Neile shares a treasure trove of colorful, curious tales that capture her home state’s history, mystery, and unique personality.

Delve into the lives of the proud Wakulla Pocahontas and the Ghost of Bellamy Bridge. Meet local lawbreakers like John Ashley, as well as transplants like Ma Barker and Al Capone. Stalk stumpy gators or Hogzilla as they prowl Florida's swamps and suburbs. Discover the quintessential Cracker cowboy and the Barefoot Mailman, plus the origin of names like Boca Raton and Orlando.

The riveting, heart wrenching story of slave traders and abolitionists, kidnappers and freedmen, cruelty and courage on Maryland's eastern shore.

African Americans, both enslaved and free, were vital to the economy of the Eastern Shore of Maryland before the Civil War. Maryland became a slave society in colonial days when tobacco ruled. Some enslaved people, like Anthony Johnson, earned their freedom and became successful farmers. After the Revolutionary War, others were freed by masters disturbed by the contradiction between liberty and slavery. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman ran from masters on the Eastern Shore and devoted their lives to helping other enslaved people with their words and deeds. Jacqueline Simmons Hedberg uses local records, including those of her ancestors, to tell a tale of slave traders and abolitionists, kidnappers and freedmen, cruelty and courage.

Crippling winter storms are locked in the memories of millions of New Jerseyans.

On December 26, 1947, an unpredicted storm buried Newark in twenty-six inches of snow. A record-setting nor’easter on January 22, 2016, unleashed sixty-mile-per-hour wind gusts, six-foot drifts and snowfall depths of thirty inches in Bernards Township and Long Valley. But no storm was more infamous than the so-called Great White Hurricane. Coming when the science of meteorology was in its infancy, the blizzard of 1888 left tens of millions at the mercy of a vicious three-day nightmare with tragic loss of life and property that no one saw coming.

Author Don Colgan tells the stories of winter’s fury and of those who lived through the most extraordinary winter storms in New Jersey history.

Every mass grave in Texas offers morbid proof that at one time, in that place, something went very, very wrong.

Texans have resorted to mass graves out of necessity, desperation and appalling indifference. These sites mark natural disasters or hide unnatural crimes that tested the limits of human endurance and empathy. Because of this, memorializing those who lie in mass graves can be controversial. Not everyone wants to dig up the darkness of the past, much less admit that the dirt is still fresh. Nevertheless, to honor those whose bones lie mixed with others, their stories must be told. In so doing, Kathy Benjamin exhumes essential shards of Lone Star history, from the Alamo to the present day.

Discover the true tale of one of the most heroic rescues in Coast Guard history.

On December 17, 2000 Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina performed one of the most heroic rescues in the history of the service. The cruise ship SeaBreeze I was listing, battered by hurricane force winds and 35 foot seas. The ship and the lives of its 34 crewmen were in imminent peril. A rescue helicopter arrived and, seeing that the vessel could capsize at any moment, hoisted 26 of the crew to safety, a record for a single helicopter rescue. A second helicopter, diverted on its way home from a celebration of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, arrived on scene in time to rescue the remaining crew.

Rear Admiral Carlton Moore tells the complete history of this daring rescue, including never-before-printed radio messages from the rescuers.

Author and former Miller & Rhoads Snow Queen Donna Strother Deekens recounts the amazing history of the Real Santa.

After the turn of the 20th century, young Bill Strother left the tobacco farms of North Carolina to make a living climbing buildings. He became known as the Human Spider, scaling countless structures across the nation. Yet this was just a prelude to his true calling as the Santa Claus at Richmond's famed Miller & Rhoads department store. As department stores everywhere reached their golden age, Strother became one of the most beloved and sought-after Santas in the nation.

Human action made one of the worst natural disasters in Indiana history even worse. Indiana and the Great Flood of 1913 reveals how this happened and how to avoid a similar fate in the future.

Indiana suffered enormous losses in the Great Flood of 1913, yet this disaster is largely forgotten. The combined tornado and flood barreled through Terre Haute, killing more than twenty. One hundred fourteen miles away in Peru, the circus lost most of its animals in the storm. At the southwestern corner of the state, a “sea of water,” as local papers put it, washed over Evansville turning streets into canals. In the capital, levee failures left hundreds homeless and vulnerable to disease and famine. Pulling from archival photographs, newspapers, and local accounts, Dr. Nancy M. Germano shares stories from across the state to reveal how Indiana’s history of settlement and development contributed to one of the state’s worst disasters.

A Wyoming historian shares an in-depth look at the historic storm and its devastating aftermath through the stories of those who survived.

The Blizzard of 1949 took Wyoming and neighboring states by surprise. In January of that year, snow, wind and frigid temperatures devastated the northern plains. The storm stranded hundreds of motorists on the highways and stalled nearly two dozen trains at depots throughout the state. For nearly two months, towns and ranches were marooned by enormous drifts, some reportedly eighty feet tall.

Communities pulled together to assist not only their neighbors but also anyone unable to escape the snowstorm. Drawing on meticulous research and numerous in-person interviews, author and historian James Fuller recounts these harrowing stories of tenacity and fortitude.

History Enshrined

Within months of its founding, Denver required places to bury its deceased. They were initially interred at today’s Cheesman Park and Denver Botanic Gardens. As the city matured, its leaders established beautifully manicured and lushly irrigated garden cemeteries, graced with elegant funerary monuments and mausolea. Everyone being equal in death, mining millionaires, governors and senators are buried alongside prostitutes, gangsters and murderers. Journalists, lawmen and war heroes rest in peace together among stately trees. The intrepid cemetery explorer will find musicians, merchants and various eccentrics—even an Apollo astronaut and a storied cannibal.

Join Denver historian Mark A. Barnhouse and longtime Fairmount Cemetery employee and historian Jim Cavoto to explore more than a dozen Denver-area burial grounds and learn how the departed shaped today’s Colorado.

Through original journal and newspaper accounts, J. Stuart Richards's Death in the Mines revisits Pennsylvania's most notorious mining accidents and rescue attempts from 1869 to 1943.

Since 1870, mining disasters have claimed the lives of over 30,000 men and boys who toiled underground in the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania. Sometimes they survived; many times they did not. The constant threat of fire, explosion, collapsed rock and deadly gas brought miners face to face with death on a daily basis. Through original journal and newspaper accounts, J. Stuart Richards's Death in the Mines revisits Pennsylvania's most notorious mining accidents and rescue attempts from 1869 to 1943. From the fire at Avondale Colliery that resulted in the first law for regulation and inspection of mines, to the gas explosion at Lytle Mine in Primrose that killed fourteen men, Richards reveals multiple facets of Pennsylvania's most perilous profession. Richards, whose family has worked in the mines since 1870, offers a startling yet sensitive tribute to an industry and occupation that is often overlooked and underappreciated

When early settlers struggled to grow anything at all in North Carolina's sandy soil, tobacco was a boon. The lives of many North Carolinians continue to revolve around the growth cycle of the tobacco plant, from laying-by to cropping and curing. In this collection of nostalgic memories, Yeargin and others reminisce about the frustrations of slugs and tar, the cropping of dew-drenched leaves, the aching beauty of a tobacco bloom and the ultimate connection of man with earth—a connection that is slowly fading with each new generation.

Believe in the Magic

The most wonderful time of the year has its own special meaning for those who grew up in the Queen City. The elves at Shillito’s and Pogie and Patter the talking reindeer were as integral to holiday merriment as caroling and eggnog. The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden really knows how to throw a Christmas party for people and animals, and WinterFest at Kings Island provides much-needed warmth in the winter chill. Many city squares display Christmas trees bathed in lights and offer horse-drawn carriages or a skating rink. But only Cincinnati offers Santa rappelling down the face of a building and an ice skating rink with bumper cars.

Join local author Wendy Hart Beckman for a merry jaunt through Yuletide years gone by.