Local History

The Huck Finn of foreign correspondents provides a colorful account of old Honolulu, the island nobility, the City of Refuge on the Kona coast, and the active volcano of Kilauea. These selections of Mark Twain's newspaper dispatches are both charming and informative. The light touch of the great humorist is seldom missing as he reveals the "loveliest fleet of islands that lie anchored in any ocean".

Exploring Vermont takes you on a two-part journey through one of America’s most picturesque and storied states. Whether you’re a curious traveler, a history lover, or simply someone who appreciates the charm of New England, this book offers an engaging blend of the past and the present.

Author Foxx Nolte gives listeners a glimpse behind the curtain of the most magical place on earth. Millions of people a year visit Walt Disney World, but few would consider it to be a place with any real history. But hidden just below the surface, past the blanket of pixie dust, is a story as vivid and bizarre as any. It is a history of corporate politics, urban planning, crazy ambitions, and failed schemes. The Hidden History of Walt Disney World takes you on a journey that stretches from "Old Florida" to the events that made Walt Disney World what it is today.

If America is one big dysfunctional family, Idaho is the cousin you forget about until something bizarre drags it back into the spotlight. Potatoes? Sure. But also Ruby Ridge, Nazi compounds, hippies in hot springs, and a six-ton spud on wheels. This isn’t the glossy brochure. Irreverent Idaho tells the state’s story with sharp wit and a wink: Indigenous ingenuity, gold-rush chaos, vigilante “justice,” Mormon pioneers, mining strikes, and Boise’s eternal identity crisis. Idaho is where contradictions thrive — prophets and paranoids, farmers and miners, militia bunkers and music festivals.

History of the American Frontier 1763-1893 by Frederic L. Paxson, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. Houghton Mifflin Company 1924. Pulitzer Prize-winner in History, 1925. The prize-winning History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893 covers a very wide sweep of topics, with unusual strength in handling violent relations between the frontiersman and the Indians. Paxson emphasized the impact on people of the process of moving to the west, downplaying the static aspects of specific localities.

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 14 May 1804, one Captain Meriwether Lewis and his companion William Clark led a 33-man expedition to the new lands of Louisiana. 8,000 miles and two years later, after rafting up the Missouri and crossing the Rocky Mountains, they reached the far side of the world, the Pacific Ocean.

Drawing from the author's time as a reporter for the Everglades City Echo, this book will chronicle lesser-known stories about the area. The book discusses the original pioneer families of Everglades City, and the time when this city was the governing center of Collier County. It goes on to chronicle colorful characters from the area, local landmarks, and the annual Seafood Festival that draws 20,000 people to the city every year.

In the quiet valleys of southern Utah, in 1857, over 120 men, women, and children from Arkansas were brutally murdered by Mormon settlers and their allies. It was one of the darkest chapters in American frontier history—an event that has long remained shrouded in silence, misdirection, and denial. The Mountain Meadows Massacre is more than a historical crime; it is a story of how fear, fanaticism, and blind allegiance to religious authority can lead to devastating consequences. And for far too long, it has been treated as an inconvenient footnote by those who should have faced it head-on.

Listen to this audiobook today to learn about the History of Arizona and New Mexico!

Exploring New Brunswick is your immersive companion to one of Canada’s most overlooked and extraordinary provinces. From thundering tides and dense forests to centuries-old communities and vibrant modern cities, this book pulls back the curtain on New Brunswick’s past and present — giving you the insights, stories, and destinations that even locals admire.

Long before it became the twentieth-century automotive capital, Detroit was a muddy port town full of grog shops, horse races, haphazard cemeteries, and enterprising bootstrappers from all over the world. In this lively book you'll discover the city's forgotten history and meet a variety of unforgettable characters.

Bound Away offers a new understanding of the westward movement. After the Turner thesis which celebrated the frontier as the source of American freedom and democracy, and the iconoclasm of the new western historians who dismissed the idea of the frontier as merely a mask for conquest and exploitation, David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly take a third approach to the subject.

Did you know that Arizona was the last of the contiguous states to be admitted into the Union? Even being the last, Arizona’s rich history predates its statehood by centuries, and that can be hard to digest in one sitting. What happened in Arizona before it became the forty-eighth state of the United States? Step back in time with us, and witness the legacy of the Native American tribes that once thrived in this desert landscape. Uncover the tales of resilience, ingenuity, and cultural richness that continue to thrive throughout the canyons and mesas of Arizona.

Maryland: This exciting book recounts the history of the colony from its founding to the challenges of the colony's early years, the religious and political upheavals, death, disease, and hard labor endured by the colonists, through the wealthy years of the Maryland tobacco plantations, discontent with England, and finally to Maryland's vote for independence in 1776.

Mississippi is a state of contradictions. It is the birthplace of the blues and Elvis, yet also the epicenter of America’s ugliest battles over race and equality. It ranks last in nearly everything good, but first in cultural influence. Mud, Magnolias, and Mayhem: An Irreverent History of Mississippi takes you on a wild ride through the Magnolia State’s tangled past, from Civil War chaos and Jim Crow laws to tamale festivals, Elvis impersonators, and casino barges.

Charlotte is a tale of one city, a meditation and inquiry into the inner life of one Southern metro of 2.6 million. It is also a story of life in cities across America. It is about a profound and prevalent experience of daily life, yet so seldom acknowledged or allowed expression, it has no name. This book calls it Soul, referring to Sense of Place, Home, the universal and innate need of people to form attachment to and shape where they live.

The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the 30-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians.

Though today it can seem as if all American culture comes out of New York and Los Angeles, much of what defined the nation as it grew into a superpower was produced in Chicago. Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop there, and this flow of people and commodities made it America’s central clearinghouse, laboratory, and factory.

Freedom, Land & Community: A History of McLean County Illinois, 1730-1900 tells the story of the diverse peoples and events of this county. Using sources contemporary with the events described, it relates the struggles to build communities and secure freedom - or a freedom as each community defined it. Native peoples, women and men, African Americans, Irish and German immigrants all sought and contested for their freedom. People whose voices have not been heard in previous works about central Illinois are included here.