Local History

In America Walks into a Bar, Christine Sismondo recounts the rich and fascinating history of an institution often reviled, yet always central to American life. She traces the tavern from England to New England, showing how even the Puritans valued "a good Beere".

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to The Maritime History of Massachusetts and learn about 18th and 19th century Massachusetts history.

Dear Traveler, Welcome to the WanderStories™ tour of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. We, at WanderStories™, are storytellers. We don’t tell you where to eat or sleep, we don’t intend to replace a typical travel reference guide. Our mission is to be the best local guide that you would wish to have by your side when visiting the sights. So, we meet you at the sight and take you on a tour. WanderStories™ travel guides are unique because our storytelling style puts you alongside the best local guide who tells you fascinating stories and unusual facts recreating the passion and sacrifice...

The best of this year's true crime writing from master true crime authors RJ Parker, Peter Vronsky, JJ Slate, Sylvia Perrini, and Michael Newton, who give us nine new shocking case accounts of serial killers.

The Short History of Basketball leads readers through the fascinating history of the sport of basketball. The book includes a history of the game and Indiana basketball sports highlights. Readers will discover a complete listing of Indiana high school championship winners and Mr. and Miss Basketball awards. The book also covers the Kentucky/Indiana High School All Star Series as well as some of the iconic high school gymnasiums in the state.

Living Landmarks of Chicago goes beyond the what, when, and where to tell the how and why of 50 Chicago landmarks. More than a book about architecture, these are stories of the people who made Chicago and many of its most popular tourist attractions what they are today.

Eat Like a Local – Seoul by Author Jason Kim offers the inside scoop on food in Seoul. Culinary tourism is an important aspect of any travel experience. Food has the ability to tell you a story of a destination, its landscapes, and culture on a single plate. Most food guides tell you how to eat like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the Eat Like a Local series, this book will give you a food guide from someone who has lived at your next culinary destination.

A redistricting crisis is now upon us. This surprising, compelling book tells the history of how we got to this moment—from the Founding Fathers to today’s high-tech manipulation of election districts—and shows us as well how to protect our most sacred, hard-fought principle of one person, one vote. Nick Seabrook has written an illuminating, urgently needed book on how our elections have been rigged through redistricting, beginning with the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and extending to today’s high-tech manipulations of districts.

Mark Clague brilliantly weaves together the stories of the song and the nation it represents. Examining the origins of both text and music, alternate lyrics and translations, and the song’s use in sports, at times of war, and for political protest, he argues that the anthem’s meaning reflects—and is reflected by—the nation’s quest to become a more perfect union. From victory song to hymn of sacrifice and vehicle for protest, the story of Key’s song is the story of America itself.

In Ludlow, Kentucky, where Confederate flags once dominated the landscape and call for civil war echoed on Facebook, a circus raised its big top—and never left. On January 20, 2025, as Donald Trump returned to office, the KKK plastered the town with hateful fliers, but the circus, a 250-year-old beacon of diversity and inclusion, stood its ground. This is the true, stranger-than-fiction story of how a creative community defied hate, bureaucracy, and small-town politics to transform Ludlow into Kentucky’s hottest real estate market.

Whiting, Indiana Saturday, August 27, 1955 Sunrise, 6:11 a.m. Its 80 degrees in the shade, and most of the city's residents are still trying to sleep off an airless, oppressive night. But inside the plant at Whiting's biggest employer (and one of the worlds largest oil refineries), something has gone horribly wrong, something that threatens to destroy the entire community. The clock changes. 6:12 a.m. This is the story of what happened at one minute after sunrise on that cataclysmic day in 1955, spoken in the words of the people who lived through it.

Called by Sam Houston at its founding "the most unfortunate site upon Earth for the seat of government", the infant community struggled for three decades against political enemies and competing towns before winning recognition as the permanent capital. The founding of the University of Texas turned the seat of politics into the seat of education, but Austin's 19th-century dreams of becoming a river port and a factory town came to naught.

Border Bandits is an account of the many, many stories of back-and-forth skirmishes between the Mexicans and Texans during the late 1800s and early 1900s. There practically wasn't a border, which caused a lot of problems and thievery between the two countries. These 17 tales in this book re-create border raids that originated from both sides of the fluid and much contested line and tells the stories of colorful characters - Mexican and American - that have since secured their place in history.

Billy Sothern's Down in New Orleans illustrates, in very human and heartbreaking ways, how the horrors that emerged during and following Hurricane Katrina existed long before the storm. These beautifully composed stories not only reveal the dignity—and amazing grit and grace—of the hurricane's survivors; they also illuminate larger truths about the urgent issues of our day.

On April 14, 1860, the day Fort Sumter fell to Confederate forces, Washington, D.C. - surrounded by slave states and minimally defended - was ripe for invasion. In The Siege of Washington, John and Charles Lockwood offer a heart-pounding, minute-by-minute account of the first twelve days of the Civil War, when the fate of the Union hung in the balance. The fall of Washington would have been a disaster: it would have crippled the federal government, left the remaining Northern states in disarray, and almost certainly triggered the secession of Maryland.

Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and his killing by the Ku Klux Klan ultimately led to insurrection, Governor William W. Holden's impeachment, and the early unwinding of Reconstruction in North Carolina.

One week in late 1999, more than 50,000 people converged on Seattle. Their goal: to shut down the World Trade Organization conference and send a message that working-class people would not quietly accept the runaway economic globalization that threatened their livelihoods. Though their mission succeeded, it was not without blowback. In the oral history One Week to Change the World, award-winning journalist DW Gibson pieces together a complex and compelling account of what really went down in Seattle.

The cowboy, America's most popular folk hero, appeals to millions of readers of novels, histories, biographies, and folk tales. Cowboys command a vast audience on country radio, television, and at the movies, but what exactly is a cowboy? Authors Joe B. Frantz and Julian Ernest Choate, Jr., reveal the real, dyed-in-the-wool cowboy as a heroic being from the American past, who richly deserves to be understood in terms of reality, instead of myth.

Most people only consider the Mississippi River when they cross it or when it inconveniently abandons its banks. But every year, millions of tons of cargo are transported by towboats on the river. In Peep Light, Captain Lee Hendrix provides unique insight on people who work and live on and near the Mississippi River. Hendrix, formerly a pilot for the Delta Queen Steamboat Co., has worked on the Mississippi for fifty years. In 2014, Hendrix became captain of the towboat Mississippi with the US Army Corps of Engineers, then he later retired to return to passenger vessels.

In October 1913, 261 miners and two rescuers died when a massive explosion ripped through a mine operated by Phelps, Dodge & Company in Dawson, New Mexico. Ten years later, a second blast claimed the lives of another 120 miners. Today, Dawson is a deserted ghost town. All that remains is a sea of white iron crosses memorializing the nearly four hundred miners killed in the two explosions-a death toll unmatched by mine disasters in any other town in America.