Showing titles in State & Local

In his 1967 megahit "San Francisco," Scott McKenzie sang of "people in motion" coming from all across the country to San Francisco, the white-hot center of rock music and anti-war protests. At the same time, another large group of young Americans was also in motion, less eagerly, heading for the jungles of Vietnam.

Do you know the WHOLE story about the Louisiana Purchase? From the first Europeans and Native Americans to its purchase from France and first explorations? Some people thought it cost too much and was too much land, while others saw it as the future of the United States. Who was right? Did France even have the right to sell the Louisiana Territory to the US? How did the Louisiana Territory go from being a vast wilderness to the central states? How did things end up the way they are today?

The long view of the path to the Civil War, as charted through the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras in this book, reveals the critical fault in the nation’s foundation, exacerbated by slaveholding expansionists like Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and Douglas, until the house they built upon it could no longer stand for two opposite ideas at once.

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Heart of Everything That Is return with “a thorough, nuanced, and enthralling account” (The Wall Street Journal) about one of the most inspiring—and underappreciated—chapters in the American Revolution: the Continental Army’s six-month...

In February 1864, 500 Union prisoners of war arrived at the Confederate stockade at Anderson Station, Georgia. Andersonville, as it was later known, would become legendary for its brutality and mistreatment, with the highest mortality rate--more than 30 percent--of any Civil War prison. Fourteen months later 32,000 men were imprisoned there.

In 1935, nine-year-old George Weyerhaeuser, heir to one of the wealthiest families in America, is snatched off the streets two blocks from his home. The boy is kept manacled in a pit, chained to a tree, and locked in a closet. The perps - a career bank robber, a petty thief, and his 19-year-old never-been-in-trouble Mormon wife - quickly become the targets of the biggest manhunt in Northwest history. The caper plays out like a Hollywood thriller with countless twists and improbable developments. Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all, though, is how it all ends. 

William McCloskey’s best-selling novel Highliners established him as an authority on the dangers and hardships of the Alaskan fishing industry. Now in an epic sequel, Breakers returns to Kodiak to chart the fortunes of McCloskey’s beloved characters as they make their living from the sea.

Was it because they were subconsciously trying to kill the drunken, violent man that was their father that brothers Luke Karamazov and Tommy Searl from Kalamazoo became serial murderers? Addressing this and other questions, author Conrad Hilberry presents an unusually vivid and detailed portrait of two contrasting psychological types in this account. In 1964, Luke confessed to a five-week murder spree in which he killed five men. Tommy was convicted of the rape and murder of four women in 1972.

An “impassioned tribute” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) to the most influential music culture today, Atlanta rap—a masterful, street-level story of art, money, race, class, and salvation from acclaimed New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli. From mansions to trap houses, office...

The history of secret societies is often a tapestry of myth, conjecture, and fragmented records, but few organizations carry the weight of mystery associated with the Sphinx Society. Founded on the principle that ancient architectural wonders were not merely monuments but repositories of pre-diluvian knowledge, the Society has operated in the shadows of academia and theology for centuries. To understand the Sphinx Society, one must first understand the symbol from which it takes its name.

For three centuries, New Orleans has harbored dark secrets in its shadowy streets and atmospheric courtyards. While tourists flock to ghost tours and vampire fiction, locals whisper about something far more real—and infinitely more dangerous.Fangs of the French Quarter exposes the documented encounters, unexplained disappearances, and chilling testimonies that reveal the truth behind New Orleans' vampire legends.

Bloomberg: A Billionaire's Ambition tells the story of how one of America's most successful entrepreneurs was elected mayor of New York City and what he did with the power he won. Bloomberg's stunning victory against all odds just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attack left him facing challenges unlike any mayor in history. For the next 12 years, he kept the city safe, managed budgets through fiscal crises, promoted private sector growth, and more. But his time as mayor was not without controversy.

Over a half century, Malibu went from an untamed ranch in the middle of nowhere to a paradise seeded with movie stars. Behind its transformation is the love story of Frederick and May Rindge. He was a Harvard-trained confidant of presidents; she grew up on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm; yet their unlikely bond would shape history.

Teenager Lucas Leonard made shocking admissions in front of the altar - he'd practiced witchcraft, conspired to murder his parents, and committed unspeakable crimes. The confessions earned him a brutal beating by a gang of angry church members, including his parents and sister. Lucas was brought to the hospital dead, awakening the sleepy community of Chadwicks, New York, to the horror that had been lurking next door. Nine members of Lucas' church would eventually find themselves facing murder-related charges. But how did they get to that point? And what made Lucas confess?

When Chris Bryson was discovered nude and severely beaten stumbling down Charlotte Street in Kansas City in 1988, police had no idea they were about to discover the den of one of the most sadistic American serial killers in recent history. This is the true story of Robert Berdella, nicknamed by the media the Kansas City Butcher, who from between 1984 and 1988 brutally raped, tortured, and ultimately dismembered six young male prostitutes in his unassuming home on a quiet street in Kansas City.

Oakland is a blues city, brawling and husky . . . Often overshadowed by San Francisco, its twinkling sister city across the Bay, Oakland is itself an American wonder. The city is surrounded by and filled with natural beauty—mountains and hills and lakes and a bay—and architecture that...

If We Must Die examines nearly 500 shipboard rebellions that occurred over the course of the entire slave trade, directly challenging the prevailing thesis that such resistance was infrequent or insignificant. As Eric Robert Taylor shows, though most revolts were crushed quickly, others raged on for hours, days, or weeks, and, occasionally, the Africans captured the vessel and returned themselves to freedom.

A vivid account of the largest act of civil disobedience in US history, in Richard Nixon’s Washington They surged into Washington by the tens of thousands in the spring of 1971. Fiery radicals, flower children, and militant vets gathered for the most audacious act in a years-long movement to...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY An "important, deeply affecting—and regrettably relevant" (New York Times) chronicle of a sinister idea of freedom: white Americans’ freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way. American freedom is typically...

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....