That St. Louis Thing is an American story of music, race relations and baseball. Here is over 100 years of the city's famed musical development -- blues, jazz and rock -- placed in the context of its civil rights movement and its political and ecomomic power. Here, too, are the city's people brought alive from its foundation to the racial conflicts in Ferguson in 2014. The panorama of the city presents an often overlooked gem, music that goes far beyond famed artists such as Scott Joplin, ...

That St. Louis Thing is an American story of music, race relations and baseball. Here is over 100 years of the city’s famed musical development -- blues, jazz and rock -- placed in the context of its civil rights movement and its political and ecomomic power. Here, too, are the city’s people brought alive from its foundation to the racial conflicts in Ferguson in 2014. The panorama of the city presents an often overlooked gem, music that goes far beyond famed artists such as Scott Joplin, ...

Birmingham's surrounding hills comprise the only place in the world with a plentiful supply of all the ingredients for iron making. This spurred the city of Birmingham's charter in 1871 around the crossing of two railroads. The city's development into a leading industrial center is shown here in photographs and postcard views, some a century old.

This book has more than a hundred pages of fascinating facts about Brooklyn. It will entertain, challenge, inform, and educate you about New Yorks most unique Borough.

Brooklyn has always been a place of diversity and distinction. These qualities are everywhere across the borough, from its people to its events, landmarks, and more. In Chronicles of historic Brooklyn, Borough Historian John Manbeck has collected the stories that reveal the history and spirit of this ever-growing metropolis.From stories of murderous pirates who once besieged Sheepshead Bay to tales of the still-beloved Brooklyn Dodgers who played at Ebbets Field, Manbeck t...

Established less than 200 years ago, Chicago has seen a lot of living in that short span of time. Burned to the ground early on, its been frozen and just recently flooded. Tucked away in the Midwest, it still rivals both coasts with its food, entertainment, and cultural venues. Chicagos Most Wanted™: The Top 10 Book of Murderous Mobsters, Midway Monsters, and Windy City Oddities takes you on a tour of that toddlin town with dozens of top-ten lists containing memorable minutiae and deli...

From West Palm Beach's beginnings as service town to Palm Beach, Standard Oil tycoon Henry Morrison Flagler's resort village, the city has evolved into a trendy art, cultural, and shopping mecca. Palm Beach County's largest city serves as county seat and center of business, government, and commerce. Taming America's last frontier saw the industriousness of pioneers and settlers such as Marion Gruber, the Potter brothers, George Lainhart, and Max Greenberg guide the "Cottage City" of yester...

In the 1950s, in Las Vegas, a businessmen’s conglomerate dominating a $25 million-a-year sports industry hid their illegal practices from the U.S. Department of Justice until they were caught. The sport that privileged cold hard cash over honest competition was professional wrestling, and the conspirators were members of the famed National Wrestling Alliance.National Wrestling Alliance: The Untold Story of the Monopoly that Strangled Pro Wrestling examines the NWA promote...

The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our timePlaying 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty Billboard hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, and until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interview...

Winner of the Penderyn Music Book PrizeIn the 1950s and 1960s, Memphis, Tennessee, was the launch pad of musical pioneers such as Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Al Green and Isaac Hayes, and by 1968 was a city synonymous with soul music. It was a deeply segregated city, ill at ease with the modern world and yet to adjust to the era of civil rights and racial integration. Stax Records offered an escape from the turmoil of the real world for many soul...

Mike Filey's "The Way We Were" column in the Toronto Sun continues to be one of the paper's most popular features. In Toronto Sketches 3, the third volume in Dundurn Press's Toronto Sketches series, Filey brings together some of the best of his columns.Each column looks at Toronto as it was, and contributes to our understanding of how Toronto became what it is. Illustrated with photographs of the city's people and places of the past, Toronto Sketches

“Lauterbach’s tribute . . . is welcome and overdue.” —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post“A well-researched valentine to a lost world of seedy con men, promoters and club owners, the power brokers and hustlers who made the ‘circuitry spark.’ ”—Eddie Dean, Wall Street Journal“Lauterbach spins the tale with enormous vitality and it’s terribly fun to read. He masterfully explains the complex logistics of the entertainment industry, and studs the book with fasci...