Local History

Part travel, part history, part adventure, and 100% Pure Michigan, The Turtle, The Mitten, and An Epic History of Michigan tells the irresistible story of the Wolverine State from the receding glaciers to the indigenous tribes to the European colonialists to the lumber kings, auto barons, and culture shapers who helped create the America we recognize today.

North Carolina represents a perfect distillation of the promise and peril of modern American democracy: hyperpartisanship, gerrymandering, dissatisfaction with the two-party system, the urban-rural divide—these issues are all brought into sharp relief in the Tar Heel State. For that reason, North Carolina politics and government are increasingly of interest not just to North Carolina citizens but to journalists, political observers, and people across the country.

For at least two centuries, the South's economy, politics, religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways, and more have figured prominently in nearly all facets of American life. In A New History of the American South, W. Fitzhugh Brundage joins a stellar group of accomplished historians in gracefully weaving a new narrative of southern history from its ancient past to the present.

William Elliott Hazelgrove provides the exciting and sprawling history behind the 1933 World's Fair, the last of the golden age. He reveals the story of the six millionaire businessmen, dubbed The Secret Six, who beat Al Capone at his own game, ending the gangster era as prohibition was repealed. The story of an intriguing woman, Sally Rand, who embodied the World's Fair with her own rags to riches story and brought sex into the open.

No historian has been able to capture so elegantly the factors influencing the formation of the state of Texas. Three-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Award, William C. Davis precisely describes the spirit of the times during this momentous period. The conflicts between Anglo Texans, native Tejanos, and Mexican officials that led to war come to life with invigorating detail.

On December 9, 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her Durham, NC home. Her scalp was laced with deep incisions, and her blood was strewn from outside to inside the house. The sinister truth of that night turned her murder into North Carolina's most enigmatic criminal case, capturing media attention across the globe.

As the 20th century began, oil in Texas was easy to find, but the quantities were too small to attract industrial capital and production. Then, on January 10, 1901, the Spindletop gusher blew in. Over the next 50 years, oil transformed Texas, creating a booming economy that built cities, attracted out-of-state workers and companies, funded schools and universities, and generated wealth that raised the overall standard of living - even for blue-collar workers. No other 20th-century development had a more profound effect upon the state.

Nevada’s politics are in large measure the result of its turbulent history and harsh environment. Michael W. Bowers’ concise volume explains the dynamics of the political formation process, which is strikingly unique among the 50 states. Even today, Nevada is unlike the other states in its politics and culture: It’s economically right yet libertarian and the home of widespread gaming and a 24/7 lifestyle, has a high percentage of federally owned lands, and has one of the highest rates of urbanism in the United States, yet is often governed by rural legislators.

Yorkshire in the Seventeenth Century charts the events in England’s largest county through the years that saw the country change from a monarchy to the beginnings of a Parliamentary democracy and argues that Yorkshire and Yorkshire people were at the centre of affairs. Jack Binns was born in Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire and educated at the local grammar school and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Before taking early retirement in 1992, he taught history at Scarborough Sixth Form College. He is the author of many published articles on local history, particularly in the ...

Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In The Fight to Save the Town, urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places.

The End of the Golden Gate is a penetrating journey that illuminates both what makes San Francisco so magnetizing and how it has changed vastly over time. With essays chronicling the impact of the tech-industry invasion and the evolution, gentrification, and radical cost of living that has transformed San Francisco's most beloved neighborhoods, these prescient essayists capture the lasting imprint of the 1960s counterculture movement, as well as the fight to preserve the art, music, and other creative movements that make this forever the city of love.

Born and raised in Hawai‘i by a father whose ancestors are indigenous to the land and a mother from the American South, Jessica Machado wrestles with what it means to be “local.” Feeling separate from the history and tenets of Hawaiian culture that have been buried under the continental imports of malls and MTV, Jessica often sees her homeland reflected back to her from the tourist perspective—as an uncomplicated paradise. Her existence, however, feels far from that ideal. Balancing her parents’ divorce, an ailing mother, and growing anxiety, Jessica rebels.

From rockbound coast, from farm and logging camp came the men of the Twentieth Maine, a volunteer regiment in the Civil War. It was at Little Round Top that the Twentieth Maine, with Joshua Chamberlain in command, performed one of the miracles of the Civil War and saved the left flank of the Union battle line.

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure. With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds.

Building a riveting narrative around four influential members of Congress - Thaddeus Stevens, Pitt Fessenden, Ben Wade, and the pro-slavery Clement Vallandigham - Fergus Bordewich shows us how a newly empowered Republican party shaped one of the most dynamic and consequential periods in American history.

In 2009, at the age of 23, Deborah Feldman packed up her young son and their few possessions and walked away from her insular Hasidic roots. She was determined to forge a better life for herself, away from the rampant oppression, abuse, and isolation of her Satmar upbringing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Out of her experience came the incendiary, best-selling memoir Unorthodox, and now, just a few years later, Feldman has embarked on a triumphant journey of self-discovery - a journey in which she begins life anew as a single mother, an independent woman, and a religious refugee.

Imperial San Francisco is the epic saga of how all great cities parasitize their hinterlands for the sake of those elites who own and run them by using the mass media at their command to shape the thought of those who unwittingly serve their interests. Using San Francisco as an example of how cities employ remote control technology to exploit water, energy, natural resources, and labor from an expansive imperium, it takes the listener from ancient Rome to the University of California’s role in the creation of nuclear weaponry and its first use.

Dear Traveler, Welcome to the WanderStories™ tour of the top 10 sights in Rome: St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museums, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, the Castel Sant’Angelo, the Trevi Fountain, the Capitoline Museums, Piazza Navona, and the Villa Farnesina. We are now ready to take you on your personal tour of these world famous landmarks. We will also tell you the history of Rome and several additional stories about Italian cuisine, traditions and customs, holidays and celebrations, humor and jokes, and what makes Italians Italian. We, at WanderStories™, are ...

The Hatfield-McCoy feud has long been the most famous vendetta of the southern Appalachians. Over the years it has become encrusted with myth and error. Scores of writers have produced accounts of it, but few have made any real effort to separate fact from fiction. Novelists, motion picture producers, television script writers, and others have sensationalized events that needed no embellishment. Using court records, public documents, official correspondence, and other documentary evidence, Otis K. Rice presents an account that frees, as much as possible, fact from fiction, event from legend.

Thing most terrifying thing about serial killers is that sometimes, they’re just like us, as the interesting facts in this true crime collection reveal. The compilation of trivia in this serial killer true crime anthology goes beyond the familiar stories to give you a glimpse of some of the more horrifying aspects of people who become famous for acts of barbarianism that are unfathomable for most of us.