Local history Books

“Impeccably researched…captivating!” —Elin Hilderbrand * “A well-paced history.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Fascinating…with new details and well-sourced reporting.” —Associated PressNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The intimate, multigenerational...

"Every day, I have lived through the massacre. While our country may forget this history, I cannot." Viola Ford FletcherViola Ford Fletcher's memoirDon't Let Them Bury My Storyvividly recounts the lasting impact of the Tulsa Massacre on her life. As the...

Told with great intimacy and compassion, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion uncovers a long-buried history of resistance and resilience among depression-era miners in Pennsylvania, who sunk their own mines on company grounds and fought police, bankers, coal...

"Beautifullyalive."-Wall Street Journal Winner of the 2022 Distinguished Book Award from The Society of Colonial WarsA tour through the original thirteen colonies in search of historical sites and their stories in America's founding. Obscure, well-known,...

During the civil rights era, Atlanta thought of itself as "The City Too Busy to Hate," a rare place in the South where the races lived and thrived together. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, however, so many whites fled the city for the suburbs...

A&W Root Beer. Foster's Freeze. IHOP. Der Wienerschnitzel. See's Candy. Jack in the Box. You name the American food icon, and chances are its roots are in California. Food historian and chef George Geary tells the remarkable stories of the early...

Lake Minnetonka is renowned for its natural beauty as well as the prominent people it has attracted to its shores as a historic site of grand hotels, steamboats, and wealthy visitors from around the world, and as the home of the legendary Excelsior...

In 1901, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, sent an expedition to the German colony of Togo in West Africa, with the purpose of transforming the region into a cotton economy similar to that of the post-Reconstruction American South...

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordinations of "The Philadelphia Eleven," this expanded and revised edition serves as the definitive account of the courageous women who shattered stained glass ceilings and sparked a global movement to...

"Roger Simon is among the many refugees fleeing blue state neoliberalism, and he's written the best account of our generation's greatest migration." -Tucker Carlson,fired Fox News host "As a citizen of Tennessee, I can attest to the fact that there is a...

The Incredible True Story of the Most Hunted Man in Pacific Coast Historyand the Woman He LovedBefore the 1920s found theirroar, a charismatic gambling addict named Roy Gardner dominated news headlines with daring train robberies and escapes from...

At a time when the Colorado River and all those who depend on it are in peril, this urgent book offers "both a love song and a paean of regret to America's most spectacular river" (Denver Post) and "a plea to save [it] before it's too late" (The Wall...

The History of How Western States Came to BeSince its founding in 1974, Western States has been predicated on the notion that in the beginning at the first sunrise, as the run begins at 5 a.m., there must always be hope that 100 miles was within a...

An important investigation of the sociocultural fallout of America's work on the atomic bombIn The Nuclear Borderlands, Joseph Masco offers an in-depth look at the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Masco examines how diverse groups in and...

The biography of one of the most famous abortionists of the nineteenth century-and a story that has unmistakable parallels to the current war on reproductive rightsFor forty years in the mid-nineteenth century, "Madame Restell," the nom de guerre of the...

Danny is a Polack with a heart of gold. He grew up in New City, home of what was once the world's largest slaughterhouse, the Chicago Stockyards. After Danny's wife's infidelity, he stepped out of what the US calls the "white man's" world. Standing over...

A longtime coast watcher tells the story of the beautiful and ever-changing coast of North Carolina-rich in culture, history, and landscape-with words and photographs.This gorgeous, richly illustrated book for visitors and residents alike details the...

"A thoughtful, compelling reexamination of an intriguing story of fatal obsession and its enduring mysteries."-Kirkus Reviews "Well-researched and a page turner..."-Library Journal The disappearance of atwenty-one-year-old woman from a Massachusetts...

Tells how dozens of America's best-known restaurants began in California, and how they have shaped the state and country's history and food culture<BR><li>Author is a respected member of the culinary community and speaks at...

This text examines the traditional Navajo relationship to the natural world. Specifically, how the tribe once related to a category of animals they collectively referred to as the "ones who hunt." These animals, like Native Americans, were once viewed as...

The sheer granite walls of Yosemite Valley galvanized a dedicated group of rock climbers in the 1960s, who saw the nearly holdless, glacier-polished faces as the purest form of challenge. The awesome Half Dome and El Capitan were first climbed in the...

Here is an entertaining collection of famed conservationist John Muir's most exciting adventures in nature, representing some of his finest writing. From the famous avalanche ride off the rim of Yosemite Valley to his night spent weathering a windstorm...

'This book explores settler colonial genocides in a global perspective and over the long dure. It does so systematically and compellingly, as it investigates how settler colonial expansion at times created conditions for genocidal violence, and...

Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win tells the fascinating true story of an individual radical organizer turned independent Chicago city council member, and her forty year struggle for justice in Chicago.Helen Shiller went from radical anti-war activist in...

In 1947, James Hickman shot and killed the landlord he believed was responsible for a tragic fire that took the lives of four of his children on Chicago's West Side. But a vibrant defense campaign, exposing the working poverty and racism that led to his...

The Plot to Change America exposes the myths that help identity politics perpetuate itself. This book will reveal what really has happened, explain why it is urgent to change course, and offer a strategy to do so. Though we should not fool ourselves into...

In February 1936, Los Angeles police officers drove hundreds of miles to California's state borders with one mission: turn back anyone deemed too poor to enter. Myths of the Golden State's abundance enticed thousands of Americans uprooted by the...

In 1609, on a voyage to resupply England's troubled Jamestown colony, the Sea Venture was caught in a hurricane and shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda.The tale of its marooned survivors eventually inspired William Shakespeare's The...

"The intent behind this book is to record classic Las Vegas history that would be lost forever if not memorialized." The Dunes operation was a spectrum of information that is intricate and mysterious at times, protected by a shroud of secrecy and...

Celebrating 50 years of The Most Magical Place on EarthSince its opening in October 1971, Walt Disney World has continued to expand and evolve as the most visited vacation resort in the world. What hasn't changed over five decades is the incomparable...

A window into the world of nineteenth-century California, from two women who experienced it firsthand.In the early years of California's statehood, Emily Brist Ketchum Bancroft (18341869) and Matilda Coley Griffing Bancroft (18481910) had front-row seats...

Nantucket Island, off coastal New England, has always been a cherished vacation destination. On a given summer day the population swells to more than forty thousand people. The summer months bring a steady stream of visitors who flock to the...

L.A.'s Landmark Restaurants:Celebrating the Legendary Locations Where Angelenos Have Dined for Generationsfollows in the footsteps of George Geary's now classic and critically acclaimed book, L.A.'s Legendary Restaurants.L.A.'s Landmark Restaurantsis an...

The first complete history about the development of freeways in Los AngelesWritten by a local author with a successful track record (10,000 Steps in L.A.)Significant journalists and historians will contribute endorsements and a well-known Angeleno will...

Brackenridge Park began its life as a heavily wooded, bucolic driving park at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the next 120 years it evolved into the sprawling, multifaceted jewel San Antonians enjoy today, home to the San Antonio Zoo, the state's...

Community journalism has long been a part of the lifeblood of America, but never have the stakes been so high for the people behind it.In Beacons in the Darkness, award-winning journalist Dave Hoekstra interviews the people trying to keep the lights on...

Beulah Annan. Belva Gaertner. Kitty Malm. Sabella Nitti. These are the real women of Chicago.You probably know Roxie and Velma, the good-time gals of the 1926 satirical play Chicago and its wildly successful musical and movie adaptations. You might not...

Dazzling and ambitious, this multivoiced fusion of prose, playwriting, graphic art, and philosophy spins an epic tale of America's struggle for civil rights as it played out in San Francisco near the end of the 1960s. As Karen Tei Yamashita's motley cast...

"It is a meditation on Chicago's old soul . . . a witty, seductive, live-wire and greatly entertaining dark comedy that you just don't want to end." Chicago Tribune "Superior Donuts is a soulful play, full of humor and humanity... drawn with deep...

How two teenage girls in Minnesota jump-started a revolution in high school athleticsPeggy Brenden, a senior, played tennis. Toni St. Pierre, a junior, was a cross country runner and skier. All these two talented teenagers wanted was a chance to compete...

A compelling tale of one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history and of amazing survival against all odds-now in paperback.Michael Schumacher recreates the circumstances surrounding the terrible storm of November 1966 that broke the mighty...

The story of four families of Cajun boatmen and their rise from trappers and shrimpers to mega-millionaires.Rise of the Cajun Mariners documents an untold piece of American history-the beginnings of what is now the global, multibillion-dollar marine oil...

Discover the little-known role Alexander Hamilton played in the decisive battle of the American Revolution: Yorktown.Alexander Hamilton and the Battle of Yorktown, October 1781 is the first book in nearly two and a half centuries that has ever been...

The conventional narrative of MLK's assassination is an FBI and CIA disinformation tactic. Find the proof here. One of the most infamous and devastating assassinations in American history, the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was...

The Shocking Reexamination of Unexplored Failures by Government Officials to Use Available Intelligence to Stop the Events of September 11thIn 2009, documentarians John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski arrived at the offices of Richard Clarke, the former...

The story of Sapelo Island, Georgia, is a compelling story that holds an endless fascination for many people, whether they be serious historians, occasional visitors, or local residents. This book is a review of one segment of Sapelo's history that is in...

A bullet train of a book, fast-paced, hilarious, rich with action. A harbinger of good things to come in mysterious ways.It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner's for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies,...

An inside look at one of the nation's most famous public hospitals, Cook County, as seen through the eyes of its longtime Director of Intensive Care, Dr. Cory Franklin.Filled with stories of strange medical cases and unforgettable patients culled from a...