Rediscover the magic of the Enchanted Forest in this history of Maryland's Storybook Park, the first children's theme park on the East Coast. The history of the Enchanted Forest is one of magical beginnings. When it first opened in 1955, Ellicott City's storybook land became the first children's theme park on the East Coast. Young visitors could climb aboard rides like the Little Toot tugboat, Mother Goose and Ali Baba or encounter animals like peacocks and burros. Upon its closing in 1989...

Abolitionists, Patriots and innovators have all carved indelible marks on the granite crags of Ellicott City. With wit and determination, they established a tightly knit community that has thrived upon the rocky banks of the Patapsco River for over two hundred years. Janet Kusterer and Victoria Goeller bring together a fascinating history of their beloved city with colorful firsthand accounts by local residents. These beguiling vignettes paint the portrait of a city and its people, from ea...

What began as a humble milling town became Ellicott City, part of the Baltimore metropolitan area and an important piece of Maryland history. In 1772, the Ellicott brothers purchased land and water rights in the valley along the banks of the Patapsco River for $3 an acre. They constructed mills, started the National Road, and brought the railroad to what was then called Ellicott's Mills. The newly constructed railroad in the 1830s put Ellicott City on the map, and even today, the oldest su...

After more than twenty years in prison, Adnan Syed's murder conviction was overturned, and he was finally set free. Rabia Chaudry's New York Times bestseller and award-winner Adnan's Story reveals how the case was mishandled and became the subject of Sarah Koenig's Peabody Award-winning podcast Serial.In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high scho...

The stunning story of one of America’s great disasters, a preventable tragedy of Gilded Age America, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.At the end of the nineteenth century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation’s burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive sum...

The true story of a triple murder that shocked a New York community and drew the interest of famed criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey.Twenty-seven-year-old Peter Egan, his wife Barbara Ann, and Peter's younger brother Gerald were familiar to Watertown, New York, authorities long before December 31, 1964. The police suspected the brazen trio in a long string of burglaries and petty crimes. They were also under investigation by the FBI for grand theft auto. But ...

A photographic history of the family-owned Pennsylvania company that became a household name and a global success story.The Zippo Manufacturing Company was founded in 1932 in Bradford, Pennsylvania, by George G. Blaisdell, who designed the first Zippo lighter in 1933; since then, Zippo has produced nearly four hundred million lighters. The product line eventually expanded to include tape measures and pocket knives. Zippo entered the specialty advertising market in 1...

Bruce Dancis arrived at Cornell University in 1965 as a youth who was no stranger to political action. He grew up in a radical household and took part in the 1963 March on Washington as a fifteen-year-old. He became the first student at Cornell to defy the draft by tearing up his draft card and soon became a leader of the draft resistance movement. He also turned down a student deferment and refused induction into the armed services. He was the principal organizer of the f...

As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city’s subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, ...

The friendly, relaxed atmosphere of the North Country belies a dark and sordid history: a time when it seemed that every city had its red-light district and every hamlet its brothel. Revisit an enigmatic period fraught with pistol duels and "tramp camps;" hermits on the run, "wild man" sightings and horse thieves. Local author Cheri Farnsworth has carefully researched and compiled the region's most wicked stories here, like the Potsdam man who literally scared his wife to death, the woman ...

In the history of the Pittsburgh Pirates, no team has been more memorable than that of 1960. In the decade before, the team produced only two winning records: a second-place finish in 1958 and in 1959. In 1960, they put it all together to win the pennant. Their reward was a trip to the World Series against the favored New York Yankees. In the Yankees" three winning games, they outscored Pittsburgh 38-3, but the Pirates were able to win three to send it to Game 7. In one of the most excitin...

In the early morning hours of March 29, 1911, a fire broke out in the New York State Capitol at Albany. By sunset, the entire western portion of the building had sustained extensive structural damage. Within lay the entire collection of the New York State Library, almost completely reduced to ashes. Founded in 1818, this had been one of the finest research libraries in the country and home to innumerable manuscript and printed rarities. In a particularly bitter irony, the fire struck as th...