The History Press [New Releases]

Join Harry Kyriakodis as he strolls Front Street, Delaware Avenue, and Penn's Landing to rediscover the story of Philadelphia's lost waterfront.

The wharves and docks of William Penn's city that helped build a nation are gone lost to the onslaught of over 300 years of development. Yet the bygone streets and piers of Philadelphia's central waterfront were once part of the greatest tradecenter in the American colonies. Local historian Harry Kyriakodis chronicles the history of the city's original port district from Quaker settlers who first lived in caves along the Delaware and the devastating yellow fever epidemic of 1793 to its heyday as a maritime center and then the twentieth century that saw much of the historic riverfront razed.

What do you really know about the Keystone State?

William Penn, the Revolutionary figures of Philadelphia, and the strength of Pittsburgh's steel all loom large in Pennsylvania's history, but author Thomas White brings together a collection of tales that have been cast in the shadows of these giant icons. From the 1869 storm that pelted Chester County with snails to the bloody end of the Cooley gang, White selects events with an eye for the humorous and strange. Mostly true accounts of cannibalistic feats, goat-rescuing lawmen, heroic goldfish, the funeral of a gypsy queen, and a Pittsburgh canine whose obituary was featured in the New York Timesall leap from the lost pages of history.

Learn the exciting story of the rise and fall of Gimbels, one of America's most beloved department stores.

In 1842, Adam Gimbel opened a small storefront in Vincennes, Indiana and unknowingly set forth the groundwork for an American retail icon. His "fair trade" practices encouraged him to leave Vincennes and open up "the largest store ever" in 1887 in the city of Milwaukee. After getting his Milwaukee on firm ground, Adam Gimbel left for Philadelphia, his wife's hometown, with his seven sons and opened the "world's largest store" in 1894. Like every major department store, Gimbels began to follow its customer into the suburbs, and the family became less involved in the running of the store. With sales and profits falling, Gimbels was purchased by British-American Tobacco. The company struggled to right itself in the challenging and changing retailing world. It built a new controversial flagship store in Philadelphia but it failed to draw its traditional shopper. By June 1986, Gimbels was going out of business and the 36 Gimbels stores located from Philadelphia to Milwaukee permanently shut their doors

In early twentieth-century New York, few could have imagined a train terminal as grandiose as Pennsylvania Station.

Sandhogs would battle the fiercest of nature to build tunnels linking Manhattan to New Jersey and Long Island. For decades, Penn Station was a center of elegance and pride. But the ensuing rise of the airplane and automobile began to diminish train travel. By the mid-1960s, the station was tragically destroyed. The loss inspired the birth of preservation laws in the city and the nation that would save other landmarks like Grand Central. Author Paul Kaplan recounts the trials and triumphs of New York's Penn Station.

Author Thom Nickels presents the city's most iconic homes and the stories behind them.

Philadelphia's grand mansions and architectural treasures reflect its iconic status in American history, for each Greek Revival home and Corinthian column tells a compelling story of the people behind it. Historic Strawberry Mansion in North Philadelphia was home to Judge William Lewis, a Patriot who defended colonists accused of treason and was Aaron Burr's defense lawyer. Socialite, millionaire and world-renowned art collector Henry McIlhenny made his home at Rittenhouse Square and left his art collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Famed architect Addison Mizner's Spanish Colonial Revival house La Ronda brought the stark contrast of South Florida to Philadelphia.

New York is a city of superlatives. It has the largest population, greatest wealth, broadest diversity and most elegant museums in the nation. With that comes an amazing history.

This tour of the Big Apple goes beyond the traditional guidebook to offer visitors and residents alike a chance to walk back in time along the streets of Manhattan. George Washington took his first oath of office on the steps of Federal Hall. Visitors can still dine at the famed Fraunces Tavern and worship at historic St. Paul's Chapel. From the Brooklyn Bridge to stunning skyscrapers, the city celebrates its own history and that of the nation. Join author Alison Fortier as she traces the history and heritage of America's largest metropolis.

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.

Join author Amy Strauss as she traces the sizzling history and culture of a beloved and sustaining Pennsylvania Dutch iconic dish, scrapple.

The name may remind you of a certain word-based board game, but scrapple has been an essential food in Mid-Atlantic kitchens for hundreds of years, the often-overlooked king of breakfast meats. Developed by German settlers of Pennsylvania, scrapple was made from the "scraps" of meat cut from the day's butchering to avoid waste. Pork trimmings were stewed until tender, ground like sausage, and belnded with broth, cornmeal, and buckwheat flour. Crispy slabs of scrapple sustained the Pennsylvanians through the frigid winter months and brutal harvest months, providing them with a high-energy and tasty breakfast meal that people enjoy even today.

The story of Chesapeake pirates and patriots begins with a land dispute and ends with the untimely death of an oyster dredger at the hands of the Maryland Oyster Navy.

From the golden age of piracy to Confederate privateers and oyster pirates, the maritime communities of the Chesapeake Bay are intimately tied to a fascinating history of intrigue, plunder and illicit commerce raiding. Author Jamie L.H. Goodall introduces infamous men like Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and “Black Sam” Bellamy, as well as lesser-known local figures like Gus Price and Berkeley Muse, whose tales of piracy are legendary from the harbor of Baltimore to the shores of Cape Charles.

Winner of the Association of New York Public Historians 2023 Excellence in Local History Award

Winner of the American Legacy Book Award 2024 for United States History

Winner of the NYC Big Book Award 2024 for Regional-Nonfiction

Winner of the IAN Book of the Year Award 2024 for Outstanding Non-Fiction: History 

The Van Wyck, the Major Deegan, the Jackie Robinson, the Hutch, the Merritt, FDR Drive, or the Henry Hudson...you might drive them regularly, without really noticing that those road names are, well, names. But, who were these people?

New York's many roads, bridges, tunnels, neighborhoods and institutions bear the names of a diverse cast of characters. The Kosciuszko Bridge honors Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish American Revolutionary War hero and fervent abolitionist. The Outerbridge Crossing, named after the Port Authority's first chairman, Eugenius Outerbridge, is called a crossing because Outerbridge Bridge sounded absurd. Shirley Chisholm State Park celebrates the first Black woman elected to Congress, the larger-than-life Shirley Chisholm. Clifford Holland originally designed his tunnel under the Hudson River to accommodate horse carts. These place names embody the rich history of the city that never sleeps, yet few know their true stories. Author Rebecca Bratspies uncovers the vibrant personalities behind the names that have become New York's urban shorthand for traffic jams, culture and recreation.

Steel portrays the growth of the iron and steel industry in smoke-filled Pittsburgh during America's industrial age.

Pittsburgh's story is the fast-paced saga of millionaire barons Andrew Carnegie, Ben Franklin Jones, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Phipps, and Charles Schwab. These strong-willed leaders of industry often plotted and schemed against one another yet united against their underpaid and undervalued pro-union immigrant workforce. Author Dale Richard Perelman recounts this struggle of bloody battles throughout Western Pennsylvania's plants, mines, and railroad yards. Pittsburgh's story is not just about the men whose names we remember, but the countless men who gave their blood and sweat to build the city we know today.

New York City is blessed with an incredible array of public sculptures.

One overlooked aspect of this collection is its monuments of Black Americans, each with its own remarkable story. The first appearance of a Black person in a city monument came in the Civil War Soldiers’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery in 1876, but this was a nameless symbolic figure. It wasn’t until 1945 that Booker T. Washington became the first identifiable Black American honored in a New York City monument. In 2007, the city dedicated its first monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman. Behind every first is a story of triumph over adversity and exclusion. Local author David Felsen reveals the stories behind thirty inspiring monuments that have endured, as well as how they found their place in the city’s history.

Untold stories of Howard County's rich and fascinating past.

First settled in the 17th century when the area was part of Anne Arundel County, early towns formed around grist mills. Nearby quarries and mills shaped Ellicott City before the more well-known impact of the B&O Railroad in the 1830s. Cotton mills flourished, and mill towns like Savage grew. In the 20th century Savage briefly became the Christmas capital of the country. It was also a well-known sundown town. Historically Black communities dealt with battles over education as the state emerged from segregation. Development brought suburban neighborhoods and change to rural areas, and planned communities like Columbia affected Guilford and other surrounding towns. Local authors Nathan Davis and Wayne Davis explore local myths and uncover erased histories.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt changed America with a government on the side of the people that put Americans back to work and inspired confidence that the nation could overcome the Great Depression.  This is the story of their progressive legacy when FDR was Governor during the era of Prohibition and the advent of radio in the Roaring Twenties, a decade that ended with the Great Depression upending life for most Americans. This is the story of how as Governor of New York he tried the programs that became the New Deal that transformed America. It was the place where his warm, easily relatable voice heard on the radio for the first time created a bond of trust with the public that inspired confidence at a time of great fear.Author Michael J. Burgess reveals the often overlooked history of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in Albany at the helm of the Empire State.

Author Gretchen Knapp brings to life the challenges and contributions of daily life in World War II Buffalo.

When President Roosevelt visited Buffalo in November 1940, he found a hardworking city with a large immigrant population manufacturing aircraft for the Allies. Nearby Fort Niagara inducted over 100,000 young men, resulting in an acute labor shortage. American Brass, Bell Aircraft, Chevrolet, Curtiss-Wright, Houde Engineering and Republic Steel reluctantly, then gladly, hired women. More than 300,000 defense workers toiled in hot factories for high wages despite transportation, housing and food shortages. The aircraft plants alone employed 85,000 on forty-eight-hour workweeks. Buffalonians watched the flag raising at Iwo Jima, participated in the Manhattan Project and observed the formal surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay. Author Gretchen Knapp brings to life the challenges and contributions of daily life during wartime.

Author Phillip Thomas Tucker reveals the triumph and tragedy of the greatest sacrifice of life of any battleground in America.

On September 17, 1862, the forces of Major General George B. McClellan and his Union Army of the Potomac confronted Robert E. Lee's entire Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland. The Union forces mounted a powerful assault on Lee's left flank in the idyllic Miller Cornfield. It was the single bloodiest day in the history of the Civil War. The elite combat units of the Union's Iron Brigade and the Confederate Texas Brigade held a dramatic showdown and suffered immense losses through vicious attacks and counterattacks sweeping through the cornstalks.

Did you know a town can vanish? Discover the curious history of five towns nearly lost to history...

This is the story of five towns located in New York's Hudson River Valley that met their demise as quickly as they were established. From the icehouses of Rockland Lake to the Ashokan Reservoir towns to the brick quarries of Roseton, only traces of these once vibrant settlements can now be found. Camp Shanks, one of World War II's most significant military compounds, was erected in 1942 but was quickly abandoned at the war's end. ""Last Stop USA,"" as it was known, played host to over one million soldiers and welcomed patriotic visitors like Frank Sinatra and Shirley Temple. In this collection of images, local authors Wesley and Barbara Gottlock revive the spirits of these bygone communities and celebrate a lost way of life.

Four decades after Jeannette DePalma's tragic death, authors Jesse P. Pollack and Mark Moran present the definitive account of the shocking Springfield township cold case.

As Springfield residents decorated for Halloween in September 1972, the crime rate in the quiet, affluent township was at its lowest in years. That mood was shattered when the body of sixteen-year-old Jeannette DePalma was discovered in the local woods, allegedly surrounded by strange objects. Some feared witchcraft was to blame, while others believed a serial killer was on the loose. Rumors of a police cover up ran rampant, and the case went unsolved - along with the murders of several other young women.

The disappearance of Horace Marvin, Jr. became a national sensation.

In early March 1907, young Horace, just a few weeks shy of his fourth birthday, was playing in the yard of his father's new farm in a sparsely populated area near Dover, Delaware. The family had just moved from Iowa and this was the first day Horace had to explore their new home. In the farmyard with Horace were his brother John and cousin Rose, all visible to neighbors helping the previous owner move off the farm. Then Horace disappeared without a trace. Within two weeks this heartbreaking event was being reported to hundreds of other families in newspapers across the country and around the world.

Horace's disappearance would be the most publicized missing child story until the Lindbergh kidnapping exactly twenty-five years later. Local author Brian G. Cannon tells the full story of this tragedy for the first time.

Culinary Memories from Philadelphia's Past...Beyond the Cheesesteak

Long before Philadelphia’s food scene was splashed on covers of Bon Appetit and local establishments garnered accolades like “America’s best restaurant,” culinary pioneers set the city’s restaurant industry ablaze. Frenchman Georges Perrier brought the city the highest, most-respected opulence, Le Bec-Fin, for 40 years running. The ultimate seafood institute, Old Original Bookbinder’s, held the title of the world’s largest lobster tank and prepared impeccable oyster Rockefeller. Steve Poses changed the culinary game with the Frog that captivated palates with the infusion of international flavors. The nation’s very first automat, Horn & Hardart’s, consistently delivered near-perfect comfort food classics via vending machine.

Amy Strauss revisits celebrated spaces, unforgettable personalities and must-have recipes that made Philadelphia’s historic restaurants remembered for their delicious moments in time.

A blow-by-blow account of the Conestoga Indians massacre, the aftermath and how the perpetrators got away with it.

On two chilly December days in 1763, bands of armed men raged through camps of peaceful Conestoga Indians and killed 20 women, children and men to effectively wipe out the tribe. These murderous rampages by Lancaster County's Paxton Boys were the culminating tragedies in a series of traded atrocities between European settlers and native tribes. Lancaster journalist Jack Brubaker allows the bloody trail left by the killers through the Pennsylvania countryside.

The Epicenter of Steel City Sports

From Forbes Field to Pitt Stadium, Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood has been home to some of the most iconic moments in sports history. Including the Fitzgerald Field House and the Duquesne Gardens, Oakland has drawn in both professional and college sports fans alike.

Local authors and sports historians David Finoli, Tom Rooney, Robert Healy III, Douglas Cavanaugh and Chris Fletcher celebrate the glorious victories and heartbreaking losses throughout the history of Pittsburgh's Oakland section, the epicenter of Steel City Sports.

Read the history of the CIvil War from the perspective of the Washington DC capital.

When the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861, Washington, D.C., was a small, essentially Southern city. The capital rapidly transformed as it prepared for invasion--army camps sprung up in Foggy Bottom, the Navy Yard on Anacostia was a beehive of activity and even the Capitol was pressed into service as a barracks. Local citizens and government officials struggled to accommodate the fugitive slaves and troops that crowded into the city. From the story of one of the first African American army surgeons, Dr. Alexander Augusta, to the tireless efforts of Clara Barton, historian Lucinda Prout Janke renders an intimate portrait of a community on the front lines of war. Join Janke as she guides readers through the changing landscape of a capital besieged.

In this comprehensive compilation of ghost stories and local legends, Shelley Wygant explores the history and horrors of a village that somehow lives on.

Beginning with its founding in 1772, Ellicott City endured an endless procession of tragic deaths. As a result, this eighteenth-century mill town is packed with restless spirits and unexplained supernatural occurrences. A mysterious artist haunts Castle Angelo and threatens to throw residents into the river below. Many of the temporary occupants of the former Easton and Sons Funeral Home seem to have remained, and the ghost of Annie Van Derlot still inhabits the ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute.

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