Showing results by author "Blake Carter" in All Categories

American democracy has always survived on a strange blend of hope, spectacle, and pure human unpredictability. This book follows fourteen politicians who pushed the limits of behavior, ambition, and reality itself. Some were brilliant. Some were reckless. Some were dangerous. All of them changed the American story in ways the textbooks still avoid. With humor, grit, and a clear eye for political absurdity, this irreverent history dives into the characters who made the United States impossible to ignore.

In this clear, compassionate guide, Jordan Blake Carter offers practical tools and research-based insight to help you better understand the impacts of CPTSD—and begin the slow, steady process of healing. This audiobook combines trauma education with actionable strategies to support nervous system regulation, emotional resilience, and long-term recovery.

Rhode Island is easy to forget. People confuse it with Long Island, assume it is part of Massachusetts, or wonder why a place so small gets to be a state at all. But underestimate the Ocean State at your peril. For nearly four hundred years, Rhode Island has been punching above its weight, burning ships, brawling over chowder, electing mobbed-up mayors, and yelling at its neighbors just to make sure it gets noticed.

It's been almost a year since I've seen her, the only woman that's ever gotten under my skin, and made me wish I was a better man. More than just the washed up hockey player, turned sports journalist whose body is almost as scarred as his soul. Now, she's pregnant with my brother's baby. A baby he wants nothing to do with. And he's asked me to clean up his mess. I have no intention of offering her the deal he's laid out. I have a deal of my own. One that will finally make her mine.

Before Columbus Got Lost rewrites the opening chapter of the Americas with humor, heart, and honesty. Jordan Blake Carter invites listeners to step into a continent that was never empty and never primitive. From the astronomers of Chaco Canyon to the philosophers of the Haudenosaunee, from the engineers who carved irrigation canals through desert sand to the artists who painted prayers onto clay, this is a history that refuses to whisper.

Welcome to Florida, the only state that could turn a swamp into a spectacle and a scandal into a tourist attraction. From conquistadors chasing myths to retirees chasing golf balls, Sunburns, Scandals, and Swamp Things tells the story of America’s strangest state with humor, heart, and just enough truth to sting. Historian and essayist Jordan Blake Carter takes listeners on a wild ride through five centuries of chaos and charisma, uncovering the patterns that make Florida both paradise and punchline.

Puerto Rico is more than beaches and postcards, it is a centuries-long experiment in survival, rebellion, and rhythm. From the first Taíno villages to the sugar empires, from Spanish fortresses to American bureaucracy, the island has been conquered, taxed, forgotten, and reborn more times than anyone can count. In Rum, Revolution, and Resilience, Jordan Blake Carter uncorks five hundred years of history with equal parts humor and honesty. The result is a portrait of an island that keeps rebuilding itself, through hurricanes, politics, and colonial hangovers without ever losing its flavor.

What can a cactus teach you about boundaries, survival, and thriving in a world that wants too much of you? More than you think.

Still Standing: Taking Care of Yourself When You're Chronically Tired and Stressed Out is a compassionate, science-informed guide for anyone navigating chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, or burnout—especially those who never get a break. Whether you're a working parent, caregiver, student, professional, or neurodivergent adult, this book offers practical, shame-free support for staying afloat when rest feels out of reach. With gentle humor and zero pressure to overhaul your life, Jordan Blake Carter helps you understand what’s really going on in your body and brain.

America tells itself it was born in freedom and perfected through progress. The truth is harder to look at. For more than two hundred years, the government has used its own armies and laws to control the very people it claims to protect, from the soldiers who crushed the Whiskey Rebellion to the police who fired on students at Kent State. Friendly Fire is a fearless and often darkly funny exploration of how power in America defends itself.

Every empire has its capital. Ours happens to be built on a swamp. In Swamp, Suits, and Shenanigans, cultural essayist Jordan Blake Carter digs through two centuries of ambition, hypocrisy, and hope to reveal the real Washington, D.C. From its mosquito-ridden origins to its modern brunch-and-barricade reality, this is the capital as you have never seen it: brilliant, broken, and always under renovation.

The paradise was always a sales pitch. Hawaii is one of the most visited places on Earth and one of the least honestly described. Most Americans know it through airline commercials, hotel lobbies, and textbooks that spend two paragraphs on the overthrow of a sovereign nation before moving on to something more comfortable. This book is not interested in comfortable.

Kentucky has been explained to death. It has been flattened into a punchline, romanticized into a symbol, and studied into abstraction. None of it has worked, because none of it has taken the place seriously on its own terms. This book does.

In Gold, Guns, and Grizzlies, Jordan Blake Carter takes you through the hilarious, gritty, and often absurd history of the Treasure State. You’ll meet vigilantes who hanged more neighbors than outlaws, homesteaders who discovered optimism is not a substitute for rainfall, and tourists who thought bison were selfie-friendly.

Irreverent Maine: Lobsters, Lumber, and Legendary Weirdness is a history that refuses to be polite. From the Wabanaki and the first bumbling European settlers to lobster feasts and lobster wars, from Civil War heroes and shipwrecked sailors to eccentric governors and ghost stories, this book tells Maine’s story with humor, grit, and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

Pennsylvania is the state that built America while grumbling the entire time. This rollicking, sharply funny history traces its journey from Penn’s peaceful “holy experiment” to the roaring furnaces of the Industrial Revolution, from whiskey rebels to steel barons, from Amish buggies to AI labs, and from political meltdowns to nuclear ones.

Kansas is not the quiet heartland you learned about in school. It is the crossroads where every national argument, natural disaster, and ambitious dream once stopped for a drink. In Sunflowers, Storms, and Stubborn Souls, Jordan Blake Carter tells the history of Kansas the way it deserves to be told. Bold. Funny. Honest. And completely unfiltered. This book takes you from the ancient tallgrass prairie to the chaos of the territorial era, when Kansas held a full rehearsal for the Civil War.

California is the land of impossible dreams and inevitable disasters. Gold built it, earthquakes shook it, fires torched it, Hollywood sold it, and Silicon Valley convinced us all to scroll through it. Behind the sunshine and palm trees lies a history of robber barons, cult leaders, political circus acts, and enough contradictions to power the state grid.

Delaware: the First State, the Forgotten State, and the strangest little powerhouse you never paid attention to. This is not your high school history textbook. From Lenape fishing villages to Dutch and Swedish turf wars, from Caesar Rodney’s wheezing midnight ride to the explosive rise of DuPont, Delaware has been shaping America while pretending to be invisible. Along the way it perfected the art of being indispensable without being noticed: chickens, chemicals, corporations, and boardwalks all rolled into one.

New Mexico has always lived between extremes. It is ancient and futuristic, sacred and absurd, breathtaking and infuriating, a place where thousand-year-old pueblos sit down the highway from a spaceport, where UFO museums coexist with world-class art, and where chile is a state religion. Enchantment and Exasperation is a romp through thousands of years of survival, reinvention, rebellion, and weirdness.