When celebrity aviator Harry Atwood made the first aeroplane flight over Bangor in 1912, observers were astonished. It was a sign that the city had recovered from the great fire of 1911 that had destroyed its downtown the year before. While some events are well known, many stories from turn-of-the-century Bangor have been lost to time. In this collection, local author Wayne E. Reilly brings some of the most exciting and intriguing hidden Bangor tales to light--from a gas explosion that lef...

On April 30, 1911, a fire ignited in Frank Green�s hay shed that changed the city of Bangor forever. From the ashes of the Great Fire, the logging and mill town emerged as a modernized metropolis. In this collection of retrospective articles, Wayne E. Reilly takes a look at the town of Bangor in the years before the fire, when illegal barrooms and brothels were as rampant as the outbreaks of typhoid and smallpox. He explores Bangor in its boomtown days, when ice harvesting and logging were...

In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew more congested, the streets became clogged with plodding, horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 crippled the entire northeast, a solution had to be found. Two brothers from one of the nation's great families-Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York-pursued the dream of his city digging America's first subway, and the great race was on. The competition between Boston and New ...

"All aspects of [Beale Street's] complex, fascinating history are told…with verve and vivid erudition." —Wall Street JournalBetween Reconstruction and Prohibition, Beale Street in Memphis thrived as a strip with a unique soul that reshaped American culture. Preston Lauterbach recounts the rise and fall of Beale Street through the life of the South’s first black millionaire, an ex-slave who built an underworld dynasty in the booming river town and created a...

“Part lively social history, part architectural survey, here is the story of Broadway—from 17th-century cow path to Great White Way.”—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street JournalFrom Bowling Green all the way to Marble Hill, Fran Leadon takes us on a mile-by-mile journey up America’s most vibrant and complex thoroughfare, through the history at the heart of Manhattan. Broadway traces the physical and social transformation of an avenue that has been both the ...

Discover one of America's most historic cities through 30 dramatic true stories spanning Boston's 400-year history, and then visit the places where history happened on walking tours of the city's historic neighborhoods. Boston expert Charles Bahne reveals some of the city's most shocking moments, from a murder mystery on the Harvard campus to the mistake that sent two million gallons of molasses pouring down Commerce Street. Other essays explore major historic events including the Boston T...

A VIVID AND FASCINATING LOOK AT AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST STORIED HIGHWAY, THE BOSTON POST ROADDuring its evolution from Indian trails to modern interstates, the Boston Post Road, a system of over-land routes between New York City and Boston, has carried not just travelers and mail but the march of American history itself. Eric Jaffe captures the progress of people and culture along the road through four centuries, from its earliest days as the king o...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed offers an eloquent history of his colorful hometown in this marvelous book that's part journalism and part memoir.William Kennedy's celebrated cycle of novels has put Albany on the literary map. In O Albany! we visit the city's ethnic and social neighborhoods. We meet uncommon characters who tread on Kennedy's stage—Erastus Corning, America's longest-running mayor (forty-three years in office); the Pro...

The Albany Post Road was the vital artery between New York City and the state capital in Albany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It saw a host of interesting events and colorful characters, though these unusual and extraordinary stories, as well as their connection to the thoroughfare, are oft forgotten. Revolutionary War spies marched this path, and anti-rent wars rocked Columbia County. Underground Railroad safe houses in nearby towns like Rhinebeck and Fishkill sheltered slav...

Explore the chilling history behind some of southwestern Pennsylvania's most horrifying murders.In 1907, a young girl was found dead in the Lyric Theatre, leaving behind an unwanted pregnancy and an abusive lover. On an otherwise quiet morning in 1891, a cartful of nitroglycerin exploded. The remains of the driver had to be gathered in a peck basket. The Cannonball Express lived up to its name in 1888, when an open switch caused it to shoot off the track, sending t...

Rockville began in 1824 as the seat of justice for the newly established Parke County. A small brick courthouse was built, and a fledgling community soon sprang up around it. Within a short time, blacksmiths, furniture builders, harness makers, grocers, druggists, and dry goods salesmen were calling the new public square home. Then over a period of 13 years, beginning in 1870, the face of Rockville was drastically altered as fires destroyed the early buildings. The newly resurrected town w...

Join Ray and Diane Hadley as they retell the history of the communities that make up Jonesboro and Arkansas's Northeast Corner in vintage images. When Union soldiers returned North after the Civil War, they brought home stories of a sparsely populated area with bountiful timber and potential for homes and farms. Over the next 50 years, first by wagon train and then by railroads, settlers came to build not only homes and farms but also thriving communities in the Clay, Greene, and Craighead...