Local History

Drawing on archaeology, historical evidence, oral traditions, and linguistics, this audiobook provides a view of Iroquois life from the prehistoric period and Owasco sites through the establishment of the Five Nations/

DAYTON: The City That Invented the Future is a raw, heartfelt, and sharply written portrait of one of America’s most important and misunderstood cities. From the Wright brothers to Funk music, from NCR to GM, from the Great Flood to the Oregon District, JJ walks through the neighborhoods, memories, machines, and people that made Dayton what it is. But this isn’t just a local history book. It’s personal. And it’s layered. Told through the eyes of someone who grew up here, it's part memoir, part diagnosis, and part love letter to a city that changed the world and got left behind in the process.

For the past fifteen years, Ian Frazier has been walking the Bronx. Paradise Bronx reveals the amazingly rich and tumultuous history of this amazingly various piece of our greatest city. From Jonas Bronck, who bought land from the local Native Americans, to the formerly gang-wracked South Bronx that gave birth to hip-hop, Frazier’s loving exploration is a moving tour de force about the polyglot culture that is America today.

In Reckon, artist Logan Phillips returns to the fabled town of Tombstone to face the history he was raised on as a boy—gunfights, outlaws, and Hollywood cowboys—for a new, personal confrontation with the West’s foundational mythology. This hybrid memoir also explores sexuality, whiteness, masculinity, parenting, and what it means to love a land rife with contradiction and “slathered in murder.”

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.

In 1631, when the Dutch tried to develop plantation agriculture in the Delaware Valley, the Lenape Indians destroyed the colony of Swanendael and killed its residents. The natives and Dutch quickly negotiated peace, avoiding an extended war through diplomacy and trade. The Lenapes preserved their political sovereignty for the next 50 years as Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists settled the Delaware Valley.

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.

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.

Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana, from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Colorful, illuminating, and at times irreverent, this is a fascinating listen for recreational users and patients, students and doctors, musicians and accountants, Baby Boomers and their kids, and anyone who has ever wondered about the secret life of this ubiquitous herb.

Arkansas has always been the state people forget about — until it suddenly crashes onto the front page with diamonds in cow pastures, dueling governors, civil rights battles, or a president from a town called Hope. Mocked as a land of barefoot hillbillies and moonshine stills, praised for its wild rivers and stubborn resilience, Arkansas has never fit neatly into anyone’s box. Irreverent History of Arkansas: Diamonds, Deliverance, and Razorbacks takes listeners on a wry, sharp-eyed tour through the state’s messy past.

Acclaimed author of biographical and historical fiction Irving Stone turns his magnificent talent to telling America's most colorful and exciting story - the opening of the Far West. Men to Match My Mountains is a true historical masterpiece, an unforgettable pageant of giants - men like John Sutter, whose dream of paradise was shattered by the California Gold Rush; Brigham Young and the Mormons, who tamed the desert with Bible texts; and the silver kings and the miners, who developed Nevada's Comstock Lode and settled the Rockies.

New Hampshire’s industrial revolution didn’t unfold in quiet workshops. It exploded along the rivers in a storm of spinning frames, flooded mills, and enough cotton lint to make the mountains sneeze.

The modern American casino resort was born on a lonely stretch of road that, within a decade, would become known as the Las Vegas Strip. This was a place where America could cut loose, enjoying pleasures denied at home. As visitors flocked to Las Vegas, casinos became a business and then an industry. This book shares stories about how Las Vegas became—and stayed—America’s gambling capital, focusing on the casinos that made it famous and the hustlers, gangsters, number-crunchers, and dreamers who made them.

From ancient Tongva lands to the global stage of the Olympics and Silicon Beach, A Brief History of Los Angeles offers a vivid, cinematic journey through the evolution of one of the world’s most complex cities. Author Derek Monaghan blends historical clarity with emotional resonance, tracing LA’s transformation across ten immersive chapters. Explore the city’s Indigenous roots, Spanish colonization, and Mexican ranchos. Witness the rise of oil empires, the engineering of water, and the birth of Hollywood’s dream factory.

American democracy. In this vivid and immersive narrative, author Derek Monaghan traces the city’s journey across ten pivotal chapters—uncovering the people, protests, monuments, and contradictions that shaped the capital. Explore the Indigenous roots of the Potomac region, the fiery trials of war and reconstruction, and the monumental ambitions of the Gilded Age. Witness the city’s role in civil rights, scandal, and protest, and discover the cultural capitals within its borders—from Howard University to the Smithsonian, from jazz to go-go.

From the signing of the Declaration to the soul of the streets, A Brief History of Philadelphia brings America’s founding city to life in vivid, cinematic prose. Spanning over three centuries, this immersive narrative traces Philadelphia’s evolution—from Indigenous homelands and colonial rebellion to industrial might, civil rights struggles, and modern innovation. With fifteen richly detailed chapters, author Derek Monaghan blends historical clarity with emotional resonance, capturing the city’s triumphs, contradictions, and enduring spirit.

Ambassador C. Donald Johnson's The Wealth of a Nation is an authoritative history of the politics of trade in America from the Revolution to the Trump era.

While doing research for his ninth-grade civics class in 1976, Mike Marshall found an article in Time magazine about William Moore, a thirty-five-year-old postman from Binghamton, New York. In 1963, Moore arrived at the Chattanooga bus station from Washington, DC, where he strapped on his protest signs. He planned to walk to the governor's mansion in Jackson, Mississippi, and hand-deliver a letter to Governor Ross Barnett. On the third day of his walk as he pushed his cart through Keener, Alabama, he saw a car parked under a walnut tree, its headlights and motor off.

This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic - along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past three decades by Georgakas and Surkin.

Yellowstone is America's premier national park. Today Yellowstone is often a byword for conservation, natural beauty, and a way for everyone to enjoy the great outdoors. But it was not always this way. Wonderlandscape presents a new perspective on Yellowstone, the emotions that various natural wonders and attractions evoke, and how this explains the park's relationship to America as a whole.