The story of two men's obsessions with the Chicago World's Fair, one its architect, the other a murderer. "The Devil in the White City" draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke ...
Quirky essayist Sarah Vowell, known both for her pieces on NPR's "This American Life" and her star turn voicing teen superhero Violet in the animated Pixar blockbuster THE INCREDIBLES, waxes both witty and rhapsodic in this monumentally obsessive travelogue chronicling her so-called pilgrimage to various places related to the first three ...
Ten years in the making and a masterpiece of reportage, "Columbine" is an award-winning journalist's definitive account of one of the most shocking massacres in American history.
Fiddle making, spring houses, horse trading, sassafras tea, berry buckets, gardening, and other affairs of plain living are the topics covered in this volume.
Kimmel, aka "Zippy" because of her propensity as a toddler to race around like a monkey, shares the details of her quirky childhood in the Midwest, where the cast of family characters includes her beauty-queen sister, deeply religious brother, wise mother, and gambling father.
The large audience that drove "The Perfect Storm" high on national bestseller lists is sure to welcome this superb narrative of the extreme hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas, in 1900, leaving at least 8,000 dead in its wake. An unforgettable story of the conflict between human hubris and the last great uncontrollable force, "Isaac's Storm" ...
This book offers an original and persuasive interpretation of the changing circumstances in New England's plant and animal communities that occurred with the shift from Indian to European dominance.
This history of early New York City conveys a strong sense of place as it covers the period when the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was a sprawling seaport, full of activity and promise. Russell Shorto offers illuminating portraits of two key players: Peter Stuyvesant, governor, and Adriaen van der Donck, a lawyer and historian whose nearly lost ...
Santiago recounts her bi-cultural childhood: as a country girl in Puerto Rico, and as a highschool student at New York's High School of the Performing Arts where she graduated with the highest honors and went on to Harvard. A unique story told in vivid prose.
Liberal journalist Thomas Frank turns his witty and insightful pen on this nation's gradual drift to the right over the last 30 years of the 20th century, asking "Why?" The conservative movement, once the bastion of Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and protected interests now appears to be the people's party, the party of populism, and Frank wants ...
This is a history of the Johnstown Flood. On May 31, 1889, following a storm, the old earth dam at Lake Conemaugh--outside of Johnstown, Pennsylvania--burst. The torrent of water which that flooded the Little Conemaugh River Valley killed over 2,000 people. The lake was home to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the membership of which ...
Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history. Culminating in a dramatic last stand between brothel keepers and crusading reformers, this book presents a vivid snapshot of Americas journey from Victorian-era propriety to 20th-century modernity.
From the author of the million-selling Angela's Ashes -- the most keenly anticipated sequel of the decade Angela's Ashes was a publishing phenomenon. Frank McCourt's critically acclaimed, lyrical memoir of his Limerick childhood won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics' Circle Award, the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Los ...
A personal history of slavery in the South, written by a descendant of South Carolina slaveowners who traced the histories of the slave families owned by his ancestors and searched out their descendants. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.
As he did previously in COD: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE FISH THAT CHANGED THE WORLD and in SALT: A WORLD HISTORY, historian Mark Kurlansky takes a unique, and rewarding, entry-point into the past, this time relating the rich social history of New York City through its once-plentiful denizen of the deep, the oyster. Manhattan's harbor was once ideal for ...
An American frontier study, focusing on the fastest growing city of 19th-century America - Chicago. It shows the land as it was when inhabited by Indians and a few white settlers, and the frenzy of development of the meat-packing industry, the grain emporiums and the lumber markets which followed.
America's Black fraternities and sororities are a unique and vital part of 20th-century African-American history. "The Divine Nine" tells how these organizations have played a major role in shaping generations of black leaders. Includes interviews with Star Jones, Shaquille O'Neal, Spencer Christian, and Nikki Giovanni. Two 24-page photo inserts.
Drawing on family interviews and memoirs, as well as hundreds of contemporary accounts, here is a meticulous account of the blizzard of January 12, 1888, which killed some 500 settlers in Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota--many of them children lost on their way home from school.
With equal doses of personal revelation and environmental advocacy, a writer and environmentalist describes her impoverished childhood in rural Georgia and her attempts to save the endangered ecosystem of that oft-neglected region. This book was chosen as the best nonfiction title of 1999 by the Southeast Booksellers Association. A New York Times ...
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the 19th century. When it was first published in 1971, both reviewers and the reading public responded first with shock, then a deep sense of shame, calling it "shattering" (Washington Post) ...
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