**“The definitive account of America’s most fascinating and surreal disaster.”—John Marr, San Francisco Bay Guardian“Narrated with gusto…[Puleo’s] enthusiasm for a little-known catastrophe is infectious.”—The New Yorker“Compelling…Puleo has done justice to a gripping historical story.”—Ralph Ranalli, Boston GlobeA 100th anniversary edition with a new afterword of the only adult book on one of the odder disasters in US history—documenting t...

The groundbreaking biography of a forgotten civil rights hero.In the tempestuous mid-19th century, as slavery consumed Congressional debate and America careened toward civil war and split apart–when the very future of the nation hung in the balance–Charles Sumner’s voice rang strongest, bravest, and most unwavering. Where others preached compromise and moderation, he denounced slavery’s evils to all who would listen and demanded that it be wiped out of existence. M...

Stephen Puleo's American Treasures is a narrative history of America's secret efforts to hide its founding documents from Axis powers, and its national tradition of uniting to defend the definition of democracy.A Boston Globe BestsellerOn December 26, 1941, Secret Service Agent Harry E. Neal stood on a platform at Washington's Union Station, watching a train chug off into the dark and feeling at once relieved and inexorably anxious....

Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window-"Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!"A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgor...

A lively history of Boston’s emergence as a world-class city—home to the likes of Frederick Douglass and Alexander Graham Bell—by a beloved Bostonian historian“It’s been quite a while since I’ve read anything—fiction or nonfiction—so enthralling.”—Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River and Shutter IslandOnce upon a time, “Boston Town” was an insulated New England township. But the community was destined for greatness. Betwe...

In this lively and engaging history, Stephen Puleo tells the story of the Boston Italians from their earliest years, when a largely illiterate and impoverished people in a strange land recreated the bonds of village and region in the cramped quarters of the North End. Focusing on this first and crucial Italian enclave in Boston, Puleo describes the experience of Italian immigrants as they battled poverty, illiteracy, and prejudice; explains their transformation into Italian Americans durin...

Due to Enemy Action tells for the first time a World War II story that spans generations and straddles two centuries, a story that begins with the dramatic Battle of the Atlantic in the 1940s and doesn't conclude until an emotional Purple Heart ceremony in 2002. Based on previously classified government documents, military records, personal interviews, and letters between crew members and their families, this is the saga of the courageous survival of ordinary sailors when their ship was to...

In the tempestuous mid-nineteenth century, as slavery consumed Congressional debate and America careened toward civil war and split apart–when the very future of the nation hung in the balance–Charles Sumner's voice rang strongest, bravest, and most unwavering. Where others preached compromise and moderation, he denounced slavery's evils to all who would listen and demanded that it be wiped out of existence.Before and during the Civil War, at great personal sacrifice, Sumner was th...

"Sean Patrick Hopkins offers exactly the kind of narration this audiobook deserves...He makes this story of America's first significant overseas aid effort and the two people most responsible--a sea captain and a Catholic priest--come alive." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award WinnerThe remarkable story of the mission that inspired a nation to donate massive relief to Ireland during the potato famine and began America's tradition of providing h...

On December 26, 1941, Secret Service Agent Harry E. Neal stood on a platform at Washington's Union Station, watching a train chug off into the dark and feeling at once relieved and inexorably anxious. These were dire times: As Hitler's armies plowed across Europe, seizing or destroying the Continent's historic artifacts at will, Japan bristled to the East. The Axis was rapidly closing in.So FDR set about hiding the country's valuables. On the train speeding away from Neal sat four ...

"Puleo has found a new way to tell the story with this well-researched and splendidly written chronicle of the Jamestown, its captain, and an Irish priest who ministered to the starving in Cork city…Puleo's tale, despite the hardship to come, surely is a tribute to the better angels of America's nature, and in that sense, it couldn't be more timely." — The Wall Street JournalThe remar...

An extraordinary American comes to life in this vivid, incisive portrait of the early days of the republic—and the birth of modern politics hen the roar of the Revolution had finally died down, a new generation of American politicians was summoned to the Potomac to assemble the nation's newly minted capital. Into that unsteady atmosphere which would soon enough erupt into another conflict with Britain in 1812, Dolley Madison arrived, alongside her husband James. Within a few years, she had...