In 1817, as Gloucester, Massachusetts, was recovering from the War of 1812, something beneath the water was about to cause a stir in this New England coastal community. It was a misty August day when two women first sighted Gloucester's sea serpent, touching off a riptide of excitement among residents that reached a climax when Matt Gaffney fired a direct shot at the creature. Local historian Wayne Soini explores the depths of Gloucester harbor to reveal a treasure-trove of details behind ...

The relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his two most influential ancestors--his mother and "the Virginia planter," a slaveholder, a shadowy grandfather he likely never met--is rarely mentioned in Lincoln biographies or in history texts. However, Lincoln, forever linked to the cause of freedom and equality in America, spoke candidly of the planter to his law partner, Billy Herndon, who recalled his words, "My mother inherited his qualities and I hers. All that I am or ever hope to be I...

Called "The Poet Laureate of Radio" by critics, Norman Corwin was the top writer at CBS when CBS reigned supreme in radio, and when radio itself dominated public attention. This biography tells the story of Norman's unlikely rise from a triple-decker tenement on Bremen Street in East Boston to the top rung of radio writers during the Golden Age of Radio. A self-taught writer who never graduated from high school, he learned what audiences craved, and he gave it to them. His nuanced "theater...

FITZ JOHN PORTER was an intrepid aerial spy, a West Point graduate who fought bravely in the Mexican War, and the commander of the hundred guns at Malvern Hill that blasted General Robert E. Lee’s hopes of overwhelming General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac in July, 1862. In late August, 1862 Lee took his revenge at the Second Battle of Bull Run. When Porter disobeyed orders on August 29, 1862 to throw his 10,000-man Fifth Corps against 25,000 well-entrenched Confederates, he wa...

HABLANDO EN EL SENADO SOBRE CUBA, Redfield Proctor, el Senador de Vermont con menos antigedad, caus una sensacin nacional. Justo acababa de volver de un viaje peligroso de diez das de la isla colonial espaola, donde se uni a un grupo de la Cruz Roja Norteamericana encabezado por Clara Barton, el informe como testigo del Senador Proctor del 17 de marzo de 1898 y su carta privada y confidencial de asesoramiento del 29 de marzo de 1898 al Presidente McKinley--impresa por primera vez aqu en su...

Cold Case CluesOn May 21, 1932, Arthur Oker, a mild-mannered Finnish tailor, was brutally murdered in his shop in the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts.While this unsolved crime terrified local residents, their fears increased after another horrifying murder, that of Swedish immigrant and fellow churchgoer Augusta Johnson in her home on Halloween night in 1933. Following the crimes, authorities searched every house and building in Rockport, and ...