Local History

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.

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 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.

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 late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival.

This beautiful literary collection explores the spectacular natural features of Yosemite through the eyes of some of the most extraordinarily talented writers. In 1851, Lafayette Bunnell chronicled his travels with the Mariposa Battalion, the first non-natives to visit Yosemite Valley. Following in his footsteps, Theodore Roosevelt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Clarence King, Frederick Law Olmsted, Joaquin Miller, and Horace Greeley made their pilgrimages and were moved to recount their observations. Included here as well is the work of John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club.

First in flight. Fierce in basketball. Divided by barbecue. And stubborn about everything. North Carolina has never been easy to pin down. It dragged its feet on secession yet sent more soldiers to die for the Confederacy than any other state. It boasts of being “first in freedom” while clinging to old hierarchies. It gave the world pirates, bootleggers, moonshine-fueled stock car races, and barbecue feuds so fierce they could outlast most wars. In this sharp and funny history, Jordan Blake Carter takes you on an irreverent ride through four centuries of contradictions.

From Indigenous trails to towering skyscrapers, Chicago’s story is one of resilience, reinvention, and relentless ambition. In this vivid and immersive narrative, Derek Monaghan guides listeners through ten pivotal chapters of the city’s evolution—exploring its origins, triumphs, and contradictions. Witness the devastation of the Great Fire and the grandeur of the 1893 World’s Fair. Walk alongside jazz legends, labor organizers, and civil rights leaders. Discover how Chicago became a global capital of architecture, activism, and artistic fire.

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.

Immediately after two hijacked jets struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Dennis Smith volunteered in the rescue effort. Having spent his career as both a respected writer and a member of one of the city's busiest firehouses, Smith became determined to use his unique background to tell the story of the disaster and its aftermath with the empathy and understanding that only an insider could bring to it. In this audio memoir, he has collected astonishing first-person testimony.

A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the "old ones" still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and complex, unforgettable characters.

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.

Betty Boyd Caroli's engrossing and informative First Ladies is an essential resource for anyone interested in the role of America's First Ladies. Caroli observes the role as it has shifted and evolved from ceremonial backdrop to substantive world figure. This expanded and updated fifth edition presents Caroli's keen political analysis and astute observations of recent developments, including Melania Trump's reluctance to take on the mantle and former First Lady Hilary Clinton's recent run for president. Caroli here contributes a new preface and updated chapters.

From their birthplace in Phenix City, Alabama to the corruption of today, the Dixie Mafia’s tentacles stretch from coast to coast throughout the south. While most of the world denies their existence, this network of freelance criminals have flown under the radar for the most part since the 1950s. Their structure is completely different than that of La Cosa Nostra so people discount them as rogue bands of individual criminals. In reality it’s one massive web of corruption, lies, and murder.

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.

Big banks make huge profits lending to people in your community and small businesses all around you. Learn how you can help these people and entrepreneurs and keep more of these profits in your home town. Barnett offers step-by-step guidance on how to earn returns ranging from nine percent to infinity by doing car leases, secured loans, inventory financing, buying accounts receivables, financing mini and mobile homes, operating leases on machinery and more. High yield investing does not have to mean high-risk investing.

In Graveyard of the Lakes, Thompson suggests that most of the accidents and deaths on the lakes have been the result of human error, ranging from simple mistakes to gross incompetence. In addition to his compelling analysis of the causes of shipwrecks, Thompson includes factual accounts of more than 100 wrecks. Graveyard of the Lakes will forever change the listener's perspective on shipwrecks.

In this narrative history of the Mohawk River Valley and surrounding region from 1713 to 1794, Professor Richard Berleth charts the passage of the valley from a fast-growing agrarian region streaming with colonial traffic to a war-ravaged wasteland. The valley's diverse cultural mix of Iroquois Indians, Palatine Germans, Scots-Irish, Dutch, English, and Highland Scots played as much of a role as its unique geography in the cataclysmic events of the 1700s - the French and Indian Wars and the battles of the American Revolution.