Local History

In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....

A sixth-generation North Carolinian, highly-acclaimed author John Ehle grew up on former Cherokee hunting grounds. His experience as an accomplished novelist, combined with his extensive, meticulous research, culminates in this moving tragedy rich with historical detail.

This national best-seller vividly reconstructs one of the most unbelievable and controversial battles in American military history—General Custer’s Last Stand in 1876. Why would a seasoned leader like Custer lead 200 U.S. Army soldiers into battle against 2,000 Native American warriors? The answer lies in this book, which captures in stunning detail the heroism, foolishness, and brutality that led to this legendary battle.

In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past. This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that emerged is our own.

A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist", the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and lifelong devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death.

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the 21st century. Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.

Since 1980, the number of people in US prisons has increased more than 450 percent. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world". Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces conjoined to produce the prison boom.

If you have ever wondered what is was like to be an explorer in the unspoiled American West of the early 1800s, then this is the audiobook for you. Not only a groundbreaking work of American history by critically acclaimed author Robert M. Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous is also a dramatic story of innovation and survival. Here is your chance to live in the very heart of the American wilderness with legendary trappers and mountain men like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith.

How an ancient land became a great democracy. 'Tony Abbott should be congratulated ... This history of Australia is vivid, readable, provocative' Geoffrey Blainey, historian Australia is one of the world's great success stories: a land long hidden from outsiders, chosen as a convict dumping...

Since the election of Scott Walker, Wisconsin has been seen as ground zero for debates about the appropriate role of government in the wake of the Great Recession. In a time of rising inequality, Walker not only survived a bitterly contested recall that brought thousands of protesters to Capitol Square, he was subsequently reelected. How could this happen? How is it that the very people who stand to benefit from strong government services not only vote against the candidates who support those services but are vehemently against the very idea of big government?

In the turbulent world of Chicago politics, Boss dives deep into the captivating life and legacy of Richard J. Daley, the influential politician and mastermind behind the city's Democratic Party machine. Mike Royko's scathing and meticulously researched account follows Richard J. Daley's rise to power, from his inauspicious youth on Chicago's South Side through his rapid climb to the seat of power as the city's mayor. This engrossing biography brings to life the most powerful political figure of his time.

In the 1980s, Phil Bellfy pondered the question: Why does Sault, Ontario, appear to be so prosperous, while the "Sault" on the American side has fallen into such a deplorable state? Could the answer be that the "American side" was little more than a "resource colony"--or to use the academic jargon of "Conflict and Change" Sociology--an "Internal Colony."

On June 4, 2004, Marvin Heeymeyer unleashed his gigantic, armored, tank-like bulldozer upon the small town of Granby, Colorado. It was an act of defiant, but misguided, revenge upon those who he perceived had done him wrong in a long series of local property disputes. Over a period of serveral hours, Heemeyer proceeded to cause mayhem and destruction while overwhelming the efforts of local police to stop the Killdozer in its tracks.

From its inception, Atlantic City has always been a town dedicated to the fast buck, and this wide-reachinghistory offers a riveting account of its past 100 year, from the city's heyday as a Prohibition-era mecca of lawlessness to its rebirth as a legitimate casino resort in the modern era.

In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.

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.

On December 3, 1999, the call crackled in to the men of the Worchester, Massachusetts Fire Department: a three-alarm warehouse blaze in a six-story windowless colossus of brick and mortar. What happened next, and how their lives and community were changed forever, offers an unprecedented look at these heroic men whose job it is to rush into burning buildings when everyone else just wants out.

A fascinating, beautifully illustrated guide to the monsters that are part of our collective psyche, featuring stories from the Lore podcast—now a streaming television series—including “They Made a Tonic,” “Passed Notes,” and “Unboxed,” as well as rare material. They live in...

They came on foot and by horseback, in wagons and on rafts, singly and by the score, restless, adventurous, enterprising, relentless, seeking a foothold on the future. European immigrants and American colonists, settlers and speculators, soldiers and missionaries, fugitives from justice and from despair-pioneers all, in the great and inexorable westward expansion defined at its heart by the majestic flow of the Ohio River. This is their story, a chronicle of monumental dimension, of resounding drama and impact set during a pivotal era in our history: the birth and growth of a nation.

From the 1970s to the early 1990s, New York City was seen, justifiably, as out of control. The city approached bankruptcy, the subways were covered with graffiti, and murders were at a record high. Right-wing fearmongering and vigilante justice were countered by liberal pleas to end poverty and provide drug treatment—none of which happened. Then, in a surprising break from the past, new NYPD leadership decided to focus on crime. Between 1993 and 1996, New York City's murder numbers were cut in half, dropping to under 1,000 for the first time in decades.