Showing titles in State & Local

Woodstock: The Oral History is the definitive, electrifying account of the rock festival that shook the world and defined a generation. It shares the adventures of a ragtag bunch of businessmen and bohemians, of hippies, hucksters, handymen, and hangers-on, working against all odds to unite a generation for one wild, glorious weekend in August 1969.

Betty Bard MacDonald (1907 - 1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children's books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. Readers embraced her memoir of her years as a young bride operating a chicken ranch on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and The Egg and I sold its first million copies in less than a year.

In the middle of the Great Depression, Montana native Julia Bennett arrived in New York City with no money and an audacious business plan: to identify and visit easterners who could afford to spend their summers at her brand new dude ranch near Ennis, Montana. Julia, a big-game hunter whom friends described as “a clever shot with both rifle and shotgun,” flouted gender conventions to build guest ranches in Montana and Arizona that attracted world-renowned entertainers and artists.

Licensed battlefield guide James Hessler has produced the most deeply-researched, full-length biography to appear on this remarkable American icon. No individual who fought at Gettysburg was more controversial, both personally and professionally, than Major General Daniel E. Sickles. For Civil War enthusiasts who want to understand General Sickles’ scandalous life, Gettysburg’s battlefield strategies, the in-fighting within the Army of the Potomac, and the development of today’s National Park will find Sickles at Gettysburg it is a must-listen.

From the author of The Ghost Ships of Archangel, one of the last unheralded heroic stories of World War II: The U-boat assault off the American coast against the men of the US Merchant Marine who were supplying the European war, and one community’s monumental contribution to that effort. Mathews County, Virginia, is a remote outpost on the Chesapeake Bay with little to offer except unspoiled scenery - but it sent an unusually large concentration of sea captains to fight in World War II.

On April 10, 1834, firefighters smashed through a padlocked attic door in the burning Royal Street mansion of Creole society couple Delphine and Louis Lalaurie. In the billowing smoke and flames they made an appalling discovery: the remains of Madame Lalaurie's chained, starved, and mutilated slaves. This house of horrors in the French Quarter spawned a legend that has endured for more than 150 years. But what actually happened in the Lalaurie home? Rumors about her atrocities spread as fast as the fire. But verifiable facts were scarce.

Not all that glitters is gold, and gold mining was not the simple get-rich-quick scheme many thought it was. The Diary of a Forty-Niner draws readers into the day-to-day life of a prospector during the California Gold Rush.

What do famous people love to do during their free time in Los Angeles? Angelenos and other notables have their rituals that connect them to the city in a unique way: favorite restaurants, museums, beaches, parks, markets, landmarks, haunts, and hideaways. The activities are as diverse and eclectic as the city itself. My City, My Los Angeles gives listeners something truly unique - a chance to experience LA the way the city's most notable luminaries do.

Author, social critic, and “New York City’s career elegist” (New York Times), Jeremiah Moss felt alienated in a town that had become suburbanized and sanitized. Then lockdown launched an unprecedented urban experiment: What happens when an entire social class abandons the city? Out in streets made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss found a sense of freedom he never thought possible.

Two Years Before the Mast is an 1840 memoir by the author Richard Henry Dana. A Harvard graduate, he spent the years 1834 to 1836 as a sailor on a merchant ship on a voyage from Boston to California. The journey took them past Cape Horn on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet. Dana provides detailed descriptions of ship life and the technical aspects of sailing. A chapter on California and its inhabitants offers valuable historical insights on the state which was then a foreign land.

New York Times best-selling author and former federal prosecutor Lis Wiehl uses new research and first-hand interviews to tell the heart-pounding story of Charles Manson’s horrific crimes, the painstaking investigation that followed, and the inspired prosecution that put him away.

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s.

In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches.

On May 8, 1977, at Barton Hall, on the Cornell University campus, in front of 8,500 eager fans, the Grateful Dead played a show so significant that the Library of Congress inducted it into the National Recording Registry. The band had just released Terrapin Station and was still finding its feet after an extended hiatus. In 1977, the Grateful Dead reached a musical peak, and their East Coast spring tour featured an exceptional string of performances. Many Deadheads claim that the quality of the live recording of the show made by Betty Cantor-Jackson elevated its importance.

Washington, DC, gleams with stately columns and neoclassical temples, a pulsing hub of political power and prowess. But for decades it was one of the worst excuses for a capital city the world had ever seen. Empire of Mud unearths and untangles the roots of our capital’s story and explores how the city was tainted from the outset, nearly stifled from becoming the proud citadel of the republic that George Washington and Pierre L’Enfant envisioned more than two centuries ago.

Author Theresa Mitchell Barbo's skillful narrative weaves together the natural and cultural histories of the bay, highlighting some of the region's diverse milestones - from the drafting of the Mayflower Compact in 1620 to the establishment of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant 350 years later. Cape Cod Bay: A History of Salt & Sea inspires new appreciation for this storied and stunning seascape, and underscores the importance of new efforts to preserve the bay's unique ecosystem.

A nominee for the National Book Award, Ivan Doig's brilliant memoir shares the experiences and culture that shaped his early years and made him fall in love with the West. From his childhood in a family of homesteaders through the death of his mother and his move to Montana to herd sheep, Doig shows his intimate connection with the American West.

Blood Moon is the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. While little remembered today, their mutual hatred shaped the tragic history of the tribe far more than anyone, even the reviled President Andrew Jackson, ever did.

The Last Flight is the heroic story of Gil Connor, an Army helicopter pilot as he struggles with the finality of a terminal illness. Haunted by the horrors of war and a turbulent past, Connor is torn between ending his embattled life and saving the survivors of a remote Alaska plane crash. Amid the turmoil of an approaching storm and almost certain failure, his underlying intentions are unknown, even to himself, until the very end.

With his boyish good looks, Arthur Warren Waite charmed into marriage the daughter of wealthy Grand Rapids business tycoon John E. Peck in 1916. He then wasted no time executing what he believed to be a flawless scheme to hijack his wife's inheritance. The plot went awry when a mysterious telegram set off a sequence of events that ultimately exposed his immoral ambition to poison all other Peck heirs. Follow Waite's fingerprints of indiscretion around Grand Rapids and New York City as author Tobin T. Buhk details this audacious plan of staggering complexity.