Showing titles in State & Local

The Ku Klux Klan established a significant foothold in Arkansas in the 1920s, boasting more than 150 state chapters and tens of thousands of members at its zenith. Propelled by the prominence of state leaders such as Grand Dragon James Comer and head of Women of the KKK Robbie Gill Comer, the Klan established Little Rock as a seat of power second only to Atlanta. In The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas, Kenneth C. Barnes traces this explosion of white nationalism and its impact on the state’s development.

A news media frenzy hurled the quiet resort community of Pinehurst, North Carolina, into the national spotlight in 1935 when hotel magnate Ellsworth Statler's adopted daughter was discovered dead early one February morning weeks after her wedding day. A politically charged coroner's inquest failed to determine a definitive cause of death, and the following civil action continued to expose sordid details of the couple's lives. More than half a century later, local resident Diane McLellan spied an old photograph at a yard sale and became obsessed with solving the mystery. 

What’s it like to race across the blacktop of the nation’s most famous track? How does it feel to smash into a concrete wall while going over 200 miles per hour? This exciting, humorous, and poignant collection of tales takes listeners inside the most exciting race in America. Tales from the Indianapolis 500 captures horrific collisions and sweet victories from drivers past and present.

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast from Louisiana...

What secrets do the Las Vegas storm drains keep? What discoveries wait in the dark? What's beneath the neon? Armed with a flashlight, tape recorder, and expandable baton, Las Vegas CityLife writer-editor Matthew O'Brien explored the Las Vegas flood-control system for more than four years. Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas chronicles O'Brien's adventures in subterranean Vegas. He follows the footsteps of a psycho killer. He braces against a flood. He parties with naked crack-heads.

On the last day of 1959 my father, the Beau Brummel of morticians, piled us into his green and white Desoto in which we looked like a moving pack of Salem cigarettes. He drove away from Lanesboro, the city in which we all were born, and into a small town on the Kentucky and Tennessee border. It was only a ninety-minute drive, but it might as well have been to Alaska. When our big boat of a car glided into Jubilee we circled the town square and headed towards the residential section of Main Street.

America’s founding generation drank a staggering amount of alcohol by today’s standards. It influenced their politics, built and sustained their relationships, and drove the economy. Booze was not a small part of colonial society, nor covertly consumed in private spaces—it was integral to...

This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history.

In this "vital book for these times" (Kirkus Reviews), Don Lemon brings his vast audience and experience as a reporter and a Black man to today's most urgent question: How can we end racism in America in our lifetimes? The host of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon is more popular than ever. As...

Author Jason E. Pierce argues that since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the American West has been a racially contested space. The first comprehensive study to examine the construction of White racial identity in the West, Making the White Man’s West shows how two visions of the West - as a racially diverse holding cell and a White refuge - shaped the history of the region and influenced a variety of contemporary social issues in the West today.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”? Well—here’s a new twist for you: What about “Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous”? Because here in this book, we go down the list of some of the most notorious murders of the fabulously wealthy, famous, or just downright infamous individuals that you’ll likely ever hear of. We ask, for example, what really happened to rapper and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Nipsey Hussle? One could ask the same about the hit on British journalist Jill Dando. And what about The Voice contestant Christina Grimmie?

In The Trail of Gold and Silver, historian Duane A. Smith details Colorado's mining saga - a story that stretches from the beginning of the gold and silver mining rush in the mid-19th century into the 21st century. Gold and silver mining laid the foundation for Colorado's economy, and 1859 marked the beginning of a fever for these precious metals.

An electric and intimate story of 1970s gay Atlanta through its bedazzling drag clubs and burgeoning rights activism. Coursing with a pumped-up beat, gay Atlanta was the South's mecca—a beacon for gays and lesbians growing up in its homophobic towns and cities. There, the Sweet Gum Head was...

James B. Mills has left no stone unturned in his 20-year quest to tell the complete story of Billy the Kid. He explores the Kid’s disputable origins, his family’s migration from New York into the Southwest, and how he became an orphan, as well as his involvement in the Lincoln County War, his outlaw exploits, and his dealings with Governor Lew Wallace. Mills illuminates the Kid’s relationships with his enemies, lovers, and numerous friends to contextualize the man’s character beyond his death and legacy.

The Liberal Rednecks—a Southern-based stand-up comedy group known for their scathing political satire—celebrate all that’s good about Dixie while leading a progressive revolution toward a New South. The American South is home to some of the best music, cuisine, athletics, whiskey, and...

“One of sports’ most storied championship teams gets its proper due” (Tom Verducci) in this definitive history of the 1969 Miracle Mets from the New York Times bestselling author of The Boys of Winter. “If you want to know what it was like to live and witness a baseball miracle in...

In a powerful blend of history and contemporary reporting, New York Times reporter David Philipps traces the rich history of wild horses in America: their introduction by the Spanish conquistadors, their role in the epic battles between Native Americans and settlers, their vital place in American self-mythology. He travels through some of the most remote parts of the American West, known as Wild Horse Country, to investigate the wild horse's current dilemma, caught between the clashing ideals of ranchers, scientists, and more.

Emmett Till offers the first truly comprehensive account of the 1955 murder and its aftermath. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. His death and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement.

At the meeting point of two great rivers, a city took shape—first as a gathering place, then as a port, and finally as one of America’s most distinctive urban landscapes. A Brief History of Portland traces that sweeping journey with cinematic clarity, revealing how water, timber, ambition, and community shaped a city unlike any other. From the Chinookan world that flourished along the Willamette and Columbia, to the muddy frontier settlement named by a coin toss, Portland’s early chapters unfold with the drama of a place discovering its purpose.

When we think of slavery, most of us think of the American South. We think of back-breaking fieldwork on plantations. We don't think of slavery in the North, nor do we think of the grueling labor of urban and domestic slaves. Rachel May's rich new book explores the far reach of slavery, from New England to the Caribbean, the role it played in the growth of mercantile America, and the bonds between the agrarian South and the industrial North in the antebellum era - all through the discovery of a remarkable quilt.