Local History

The Quaker City and its hospitals were pioneers in the field of mental health. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, its institutions were crowded and patients lived in shocking conditions. The mentally ill were quartered with the dangerously criminal. By 1906, the city had purchased a vast acreage of farmland incorporated into the city, and the Philadelphia Hospital dubbed its new venture Byberry City Farms. From the start, its history was riddled with corruption and committees, investigations and inquests, appropriations and abuse.

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.

In the tradition of William Warner's Beautiful Swimmers, veteran journalist Colin Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) traces the history of the rugged fishing communities that dot the coast of Maine and the prized crustacean that has long provided their livelihood.

The American South is a multifaceted region with its own vocabulary, peculiarities, and cultural touchstones. Even for those born in the South, the unspoken rules - layered in local nuances and complexities - can sometimes be confounding. Tennessee whiskey may technically be bourbon, but don't let anyone in Kentucky hear you call it that. And bless your heart, don't you dare make the mistake of confusing a magnolia blossom with a Japanese tulip.

What brought the author's family to Texas? What is it about Texas that for centuries has exerted a powerful allure for adventurers and scoundrels, dreamers and desperate souls, outlaws and outliers? In search of answers, Hodge travels across his home state - which he loves and hates in shifting measure - tracing the wanderings of his ancestors into forgotten histories along vanished roads. Here is an unsentimental, keenly insightful attempt to grapple with all that makes Texas so magical, punishing, and polarizing.

Dallas first grabbed the national imagination in 1936 when it hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition. Since then, the fascination with Big D has seldom flagged. If the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 cast a pall over the city, the success of the Dallas Cowboys and the popularity of the television series Dallas revived the image of a glitzy, hustling metropolis at the center of the Sunbelt.

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.

When gold was first discovered on the American River above Sutter's Fort in January 1848, California was sparsely populated frontier territory not yet ceded to the United States from Mexixo. The discovery triggered a massive influx as hundreds of thousands of people scrambled to California in search of riches, braving dangerous journeys across the Pacific, around Cape Horn, and through the Isthmus of Panama, as well as across America's vast, unsettled wilderness. Cities sprang up overnight, in response to the demand for supplies and services of all kinds.

Learn about the bomb blast that rocked the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, killing four young girls.

Dear Traveler, Welcome to the WanderStories™ History of Paris. Paris is considered to be one of the best-loved and most beautiful cities in the world. With a history riddled with intrigue, war, revolution and scandal, its attraction is irresistible to the traveler. Paris has a glamorous image as one of the world’s major tourist destinations and as a center for culture, fashion, luxury goods, and of course everything romantic. With its ancient and more recent history, fabulous architecture and marvelous heritage, visiting Paris is definitely an unforgettable experience. There is only one...

Part of the inscription on the base of the San Jacinto Monument reads: "Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world." James W. Pohl, a noted military historian, tells the exciting story of the pivotal battle of the Texas Revolution.

In an easy conversational style, The Restless Northwest provides a brief overview of the remarkable geological processes that have shaped the Pacific Northwest. The narrative is also sprinkled with firsthand accounts of the people involved in recent exciting, scientific discoveries. Williams enlivens this story of long-ago geologic events, with a variety of fascinating asides, on everything from enormous undersea tubeworms, to the Willamette meteorite.

Fort Worth has been called The City Where the West Begins, Cowtown, and the silent partner in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. None of these descriptions quite tells the story of this city and its people. Since its founding in the mid nineteenth-century as a military outpost, Fort Worth has gone through many phases - cattle, oil, aviation, and tourist. The little village on the Trinity has grown up to become a global city that is a melting pot of economic forces and diverse cultures.

History, location, and culture continue to link New Orleans to France while distancing it culturally and symbolically from the US. This audiobook explores the traces of French language, history, and artistic expression that have been present there over the last 300 years. This volume focuses on the French, Spanish, and American colonial periods to understand the imprint that French sociocultural dynamic left on the Crescent City.

There are at least thirteen other Scarboroughs in the world, but the Scarborough on Yorkshire's coast in England is the first and parent of all the others. This is a new account of a 2000-year old history of a place that has been Iron-Age camp, Roman signal station, Vikings' lair, Angevin castle, European fish fair, shipbuilding port and Britain's earliiest watering resort that invented the holiday by the sea. Jack Binns was born in Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire and educated at the grammar school there and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After more than 30 years teaching, as...

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.

The story of John Robert Mortimer (1825-1911) encompasses both the beginnings of archaeology as a scientific study and the details of a life lived entirely in one small corner of the East Riding of Yorkshire. During the second half of the nineteenth century archaeology made the transition from antiquarian pursuit to fledgling academic discipline. Mortimer, a corn merchant from Driffield, was of central importance, laying many of the foundations on which the subject came to be built. He devoted most of his adult life to the systematic and careful examination of large numbers of prehistoric ...

For some of the world's most powerful people, the Empire State Building is the ultimate prize. In a riveting chronicle of betrayal, revenge, family rivalry, and raw greed, Wall Street Journal columnist Pacelle tells the compelling tale of the Empire State Building ownership battle of the 1980s and '90s, bringing to life a colorful cast of characters that includes Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and the eccentric Japanese billionaire Hideki Yokoi.

On 15 March 1781, the armies of Nathanael Greene and Lord Charles Cornwallis fought one of the bloodiest and most intense engagements of the American Revolution at the Guilford Courthouse in piedmont North Carolina. Although victorious, Cornwallis declared the conquest of the Carolinas impossible. He made the fateful decision to march into Virginia, eventually leading his army to the Yorktown surrender and clearing the way for American independence.

Kiawah Island: A History, by historian Ashton Cobb, provides a comprehensive consideration of the diverse factors and factions that have combined to shape Kiawah's fascinating history. Cobb calls upon a wide array of sources to tell the story of a South Carolina sea island that has been the site of great change through the centuries, but has remained a treasured location for generations of inhabitants and devoted visitors.