On March 22, 1990, local fishermen Hokey Hokanson and his teenage son, Billy, set sail for Cape Cod in the "Sol e Mar." When disaster struck three days later, Billy transmitted a brief, heavily garbled radio distress call. A hoax call immediately followed Billy's cry for help, and believing that the two were connected, the U.S. Coast Guard did not launch rescue units for several days. The Hokansons' deaths prompted a new anti-hoax law and changed United States Coast Guard search and rescue...

The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly resultsA quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of “black mayonnaise.” Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as “beach whistles.”In ...

A lobster roll aficionado reviews forty lobster rolls from restaurants around New England.The mighty lobster roll is best enjoyed at a picnic table under a red umbrella accompanied by the sounds and smells of the sea. The perfect roll is all in the execution, and the variations are subtle but nearly endless—from top-sliced to buttered or mayonnaise-based. Blogger extraordinaire Sally Lerman chronicles her quest for the perfect bite in Lobster Rolls of New Englan...

Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation. Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of ge...

On the Fourth of July in 1866, joy turned to tragedy in Portland, Maine. A boy threw a firecracker onto a pile of wood shavings and it erupted in a blaze as residents prepared to celebrate the 110th anniversary of American independence in the momentous time following the Civil War. The violent conflagration killed two people and destroyed all structures on nearly thirty streets. Authors Michael Daicy and Don Whitney, both firefighters, chronicle the day's catastrophic events, as well as th...

A first-hand account and fascinating new details of the 1952 rescue of the SS Pendleton, the true story behind the film The Finest Hours.On February 18, 1952, off the coast of Cape Cod, a fierce nor'easter snapped in half two 503-foot oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer. Human grace and grit, leadership and endurance prevail as Theresa Mitchell Barbo and Captain W. Russell Webster (Ret.) recount the historic, heroic res...

The collaborators of A Guide to Haunted New England track the spirits of the "Constitution State" through its storied history.The emerald sheen illuminating the Sabbatarian burying ground, 8 Mile River's misty figures which emerge at the Devil's Hopyard, and flying demon skeletons on Charles Island—these bizarre haunts are uniquely Connecticut. In the ghostly lore of the state, the ambient ramblings of the Leatherman still ring out in the caves of Harwinto...

The true story of the artist whose high school years in Massachusetts inspired Riverdale.Bob Montana, creator of the Archie comic strip and one of America's greatest cartoonists, always considered himself a true New Englander. Filled with the antics of the rambunctious teenagers of the fictional Riverdale High, Montana's comic strip was based on his high school years in Haverhill, Massachusetts.At the height of his career, he lived as a beloved res...

Through firsthand accounts, interviews with survivors and a gripping collection of vintage photographs, author Michael Skidgell attempts to make sense of one of Hartford's worst tragedies. Almost 7,000 fans eagerly packed into the Ringling Brothers big top on July 6, 1944. With a single careless act, an afternoon at the "Greatest Show on Earth" quickly became one of terror and tragedy as the paraffin-coated circus tent caught fire. Panicked crowds rushed for the few exits, but in minutes, ...

Since 1875, southeastern Connecticut has played host to the oldest high school football rivalry in the nation: the Norwich Free Academy Wildcats versus the New London Whalers. This complex and competitive rivalry has inspired mayhem and merriment, from biased officials, cheating faculty and vandalism among students to disco-dancing coaches and marching band rallies. Learn how a fight during the 1951 meeting stopped the game for two years, how the Bulkeley Tigers (who became New London High...

New Hampshire Tales is a collection of writings about a very special place in southern New Hampshire. It describes the author’s discoveries and observations, his love of nature, his family’s experiences, and historical research about this place. Some of the tales are humorous, some contain pure research, and others focus on nature’s gifts. The setting is a first settler’s farm that had been abandoned during the Great Depression. Many of the tales are taken from actual events invol...

New Hampshire once had nearly four hundred covered bridges, most of which unfortunately are no longer in existence. Some of them were railroad bridges and, although often viewed as charming relics of the past, all of these bridges were actually vital links in New Hampshire's transportation system. Covered bridges were used to cross most of New Hampshire's large rivers, including the Connecticut, Merrimack, Mascoma, Contoocook, Pemigewasset, and Ashuelot.New Hampshire Covered Bridges is a p...