Local History

Why is racism still with us, and what can the Civil Rights Movement tell us about today? David Billings, a self-described “son of the South,” tackles these questions in his well-researched, deeply personal and eminent new audio book, Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life.

Erik Larson dépeint une nouvelle tragédie américaine, s’intéressant cette fois à la folie des hommes qui pensent pouvoir maîtriser les lois de la nature, et au combat héroïque d’Isaac Cline, coupable d’une erreur fatale qu’il paiera au prix fort.

From the Lowcountry's first recorded duel to old-fashioned summers at the "hottest spot in town," this book will captivate you with stories of people, events, and places that have all but vanished from memory. Find out the real history behind some of Charleston's beloved mansions and learn about the early plantations and their owners. Join the authors as they relate the riots and romance, the preservation and politics—and even a ghost story—from Charleston's hidden history.

California was once the crown jewel of the American dream: prosperous, innovative, egalitarian, and aspirational. Today, it stands as a dystopian warning of what happens when nihilistic, radical ideology consumes the foundations of governance. In Failed State, Christopher Moritz dissects the unraveling of the Golden State with the precision of a lawyer, the depth of a historian, and the heartbreak of a California native son who has witnessed its collapse firsthand.

For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.

Welcome to the George Inn near London Bridge; a cosy, wood-panelled, galleried coaching house a few minutes' walk from the Thames. Consider this: who else has made this their local over the last 600 years? Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims almost certainly drank in the George on their way to Canterbury. Shakespeare may have popped in from the nearby Globe, and we know that Dickens definitely did. Mail carriers changed their horses here, while sailors drank here before sailing.

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.

The autobiography of the famous Apache war chief, Geronimo. A shout of "Geronimo!!!" is still evoked to show courage. Hear, in his own words, the war story of Geronimo and his Chiricahua band of Apache Indians.

Explore the untold stories and pivotal moments in the history of the Philadelphia Police Department with The Unofficial History of the PPD. Authored by Gary Capuano, a lifelong South Philadelphia resident and decorated police veteran, this book offers an unparalleled glimpse into the heart of one of America's oldest and most complex law enforcement agencies.

The Westerners tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories. The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West—Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants—in the 19th century. The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to erase these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity.

From CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, a revelatory account of how one man, four teenagers, and a struggling city collided over race, vigilantism, and self-defense . . . and exposed the fault lines of a nation.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and on the eve of a national recession, New York Times writer Dan Barry launched a column about America: not the one populated only by cable-news pundits, but the America defined and redefined by those who clean the hotel rooms, tend the beet fields, endure disasters both natural and manmade. As the name of the president changed from Bush to Obama to Trump, Barry was crisscrossing the country, filing deeply moving stories from the tiniest dot on the American map to the city that calls itself the Capital of the World.

This 2nd Edition is the result of my research for a great number of years. The 1st Edition was in hardback and was published in 2003. This book is my attempt to preserve a consecutive account of the investigation that I have done into the McFarland family history for many years.

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.

The Ballot Breakdown is a tour through 250 years of America’s most spectacular electoral meltdowns. From property-based voting and backroom deals to voter suppression, stolen narratives, televised chaos, algorithmic manipulation, and the Capitol riot — this book tells the truth about a system that was never built to hold this much pressure. Through calm, cutting analysis and a voice that never picks sides, JJ walks the reader through the most infamous (and forgotten) moments in American election history.

Propulsive and lyrical, Texian Exodus transports us to the frigid, sodden spring of 1836, when thousands of Texians—Anglo-American settlers—fled eastward for the United States in fear of Antonio López de Santa Anna's advancing Mexican army. Leading Texas historian Stephen L. Hardin draws on the accounts of the Runaways themselves to relate a tale of high stakes and great sorrow. While Houston tried to build a force that could defeat Santa Anna, the evacuees suffered incalculable pain and suffering. Yet dignity and community were not among the losses

Webb's classic history of the Texas Rangers has been popular ever since its first publication in 1935. This edition is a reproduction of the original Houghton Mifflin edition.

At the crux of America's history stand two astounding events: the immediate and complete destruction of the most powerful system of slavery in the modern world, followed by a political reconstruction in which new constitutions established the fundamental rights of citizens for formerly enslaved people. Few people living in 1860 would have dared imagine either event, and yet, in retrospect, both seem to have been inevitable. In a beautifully crafted narrative, Edward L. Ayers restores the drama of the unexpected to the history of the Civil War.

Ten stories of vigilantes, vendettas, and violence in Texas during a turbulent era of reconstruction—history with a vengeance.

Imagine being one of twenty children, ages seven to fourteen, stranded in a makeshift school bus for thirty-three hours, during the worst blizzard to hit Colorado in over fifty years. The gripping narrative of Children of the Storm leads you through this haunting experience.