The History Press [New Releases]

Join OnMilwaukee.com's Bobby Tanzilo for an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of Milwaukee's incredible past.

Sail out to the Breakwater Lighthouse, scramble up the wings of the Milwaukee Art Museum and dig up the city's roots on the corner of Water Street and Wisconsin Avenue. Seize the chance to do a little urban spelunking and explore basilicas, burial grounds and breweries. Ring the bell in the city hall tower, and take a turn around the secret indoor track at a Montessori school. No space is off limits in these untold stories of the Cream City's most familiar places and celebrated landmarks.

The untold stories of the tranquil town of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, that have been swept under the rug or lost over the years.

Sheboygan deserves its reputation as a conservative city clean, quiet and law-abiding. But here are some stories that have been swept under the rug or lost overboard. Venture into the mists of the ""Lake Michigan Triangle"" that have swallowed boats, planes and entire tribes. Investigate speakeasy shootings, safes burgled by a fly swatter, poisoned Christmas candy, flaming shipwrecks and the hoax that had militiamen firing on their own cattle. Or just sit down with some bizarre anecdotes about a hometown you thought you knew, from the town's first baseball game to the man freed from jail by a jug of whiskey to the deputy sheriff who had to enforce Nicholas Hoffman's first bath in 50 years.

Green Bay has always been a city with a fierce sense of tradition complemented by a friendly atmosphere. Those qualities seem to attract not only living visitors but also spirits of the dead.

Tour the city's haunted past with Tim Freiss as he follows the trail of the tragic, the inexplicable and the just plain spooky. From the desecration of the father of Wisconsin's burial spot to the winery that was a stop on the Underground Railroad to the nightclub haunted by a bullet-riddled love triangle, Haunted Green Bay stirs up the kind of history that keeps us awake a little bit longer once the lights are out.

Ever since her boat drifted up against the mammoth docks in Milwaukee's harbor, Leah Dobkin has been enthralled by the evolution of the port and the city so firmly moored to it. From an era when it was a "Milwaukee Miracle" to make landfall without losing luggage to a promising future powered by alternative energy, Soul of a Port is steered by that same sense of wonder. And since the port's story is not just one of nuts, bolts and cranes, Dobkin's narrative is also well crewed by the characters who have given the place such a fascinating legacy. Settle in for an entertaining passage that includes a longshoreman's poetry, the Milwaukee Clipper's recipe for prime rib, a tugboat ghost story and much, much more.

Milwaukee hasn't earned a reputation as a launching pad for hopeful rock stars, but for generations it has had the perfect acoustics for the garage band rock scene. Of course, the whole point of garage rock is that every place has the perfect acoustics, but just try telling that to the folks who heard Blitzkrieg Over Kenosha for the first time. With dual citizenship in the research library and the basement show, Peter Roller follows Milwaukee's garage rockers everywhere they haul their amps, observing bands like the Stilettos, the Angry Daisies, the Palmettos, the Chevelles and the Violent Femmes in their natural habitat.

Visit the wicked Fox Cities, full of place names like La Grand Butte des Morts (the Big Hill of the Dead") and Winneconne ("the Place of Skulls") that date from an era when "settlement" was frequently synonymous with "slaughter." Even after the firm establishment of modern civilization, there remained an uneasy truce between lined pockets and bared knuckles that was often only brokered by heavy drinking. Stumble across the frozen Fox River and barge into local watering holes, where the only pauses in the revelry are discussions about desecrating Joe McCarthy's grave. Points of interest include the Oshkosh rat-betting scene, the Appleton "Union Street Resorts" and the Neenah tavern, where a world-champion boxer hid from the doctor who had bought his bones."

Thousands of young men embarked on the adventure of a lifetime when they joined the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

Service at Wisconsin's popular state park offered notoriety absent at most camp assignments. While most of the CCC work around the country was in remote forests and farmlands, at Devil's Lake tourists could view CCC project activity each day, forging that labor into an essential part of the park experience. Historian Robert J. Moore interviews veterans and mines the archives to preserve this legacy so that the gasps of wonder at nature's marvels remain mixed with respect for the men who helped bring them forth.

The city of Madison is no stranger to odd goings-on and events that just don't add up. Plunge into murky waters in search of the Lake Mendota monster or briefly part the clouds of the Great Airship Mystery of 1897, which was witnessed by such credible sources as "Wisconsin judges, good church-going folk and those not predisposed to drink whiskey." Please don't stare for too long at Myrtle Downing's shoes, which were said to be made from human skin. Revisit some of the murders that earned the intersection of Murray Street and Desmond Court the epithet "Death's Corner." And that is just a portion of the unsolved crimes, strange creatures and bizarre happenstance that make up Mysterious Madison.