Showing titles in State & Local

Webb's classic history of the Texas Rangers has been popular ever since its first publication in 1935. This edition is a reproduction of the original Houghton Mifflin edition.

Brought to you by Penguin. Many of us think we know the American South. We can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more...

Season of the Witch is the first book to fully capture the dark magic of San Francisco in this breathtaking period, when the city radically changed itself - and then revolutionized the world. The cool gray city of love was the epicenter of the 1960s cultural revolution. But by the early 1970s, San Francisco’s ecstatic experiment came crashing down from its starry heights. The city was rocked by savage murder sprees, mysterious terror campaigns, political assassinations, street riots, and finally a terrifying sexual epidemic.

L.A. Coroner is a gripping true crime biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the controversial “Coroner to the Stars,” who performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Natalie Wood, and hundreds of other notable personalities. Choi, an award-winning historian and professor, deftly blends Los Angeles history, death investigation and forensic science, and Asian American history in a feat of exquisite storytelling.

Those were the days when you drove to Vegas from Iowa or Ohio or took a junket flight from New York. The Missus would wear her best dress and mink coat, find her lucky slot machine, and you would find the hot craps table. Maybe you’d slip the maître d’ a couple bucks to sit at an A table in the showroom for the big production numbers with showgirls and plenty of feathers and not much else. Or you’d get to see Elvis at the International or Sinatra at the Sands.

In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general.

In the fading light of August 28, 1862, an untested Union brigade of Wisconsin and Indiana men fought an unexpected 90-minute stand-up clash with the Confederate veterans of Stonewall Jackson on the Virginia farm fields of John Brawner. The Rebels recalled a Wisconsin man that day “yelling like demons [in] a roaring hell of fire.” Despite its fascinating origins and far-reaching consequences, surprisingly little has been penned about this remarkable engagement.

Before Jonas Salk's vaccine, polio was a social death sentence. The disabled were expected to disappear into their limitations, pitied by those around them. This might have been the story of Ed Roberts, paralyzed and consigned to sleep in an iron lung. But Roberts insisted on what all people deserve: a full life.

A nominee for the National Book Award, Ivan Doig's brilliant memoir shares the experiences and culture that shaped his early years and made him fall in love with the West. From his childhood in a family of homesteaders through the death of his mother and his move to Montana to herd sheep, Doig shows his intimate connection with the American West.

The Last Flight is the heroic story of Gil Connor, an Army helicopter pilot as he struggles with the finality of a terminal illness. Haunted by the horrors of war and a turbulent past, Connor is torn between ending his embattled life and saving the survivors of a remote Alaska plane crash. Amid the turmoil of an approaching storm and almost certain failure, his underlying intentions are unknown, even to himself, until the very end.

The Gunmen of the American Wild West Collection brings to life the history of the frontier west of the Mississippi in the latter parts of the 19th century. The gunmen ranged from lawmen to cowboys, ranchers, and outlaws. Most of the outlaws in the Old West preyed on banks, trains, and stagecoaches. Although spread thin, the law was present, usually on the level of deputy US marshal, county sheriff, and the town marshal or constable.

It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U.S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racial discontent, and an undeclared war on the island 90 miles to the south.

What if I told you that in 1912, the most prosperous community in North Georgia wasn't owned by white plantation families, but by the grandchildren of enslaved people who had built an agricultural and business empire that surpassed anything their former masters had ever achieved? In the rolling hills of Forsyth County, Georgia, an extraordinary experiment in American freedom was unfolding.

This program features a preface and acknowledgments read by the author. "The audiobook is a fun and easy listening experience."- AudioFile From the creator of the "Legends of the Old West" podcast, an audiobook exploring the overlapping narratives of the biggest legends in frontier mythology...

On October 8, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed near Perryville, Kentucky, in what would be the largest battle ever fought on Kentucky soil. The climax of a campaign that began two months before in Northern Mississippi, Perryville came to be recognized as the high water mark of the western Confederacy. Some said the hard-fought battle, forever remembered by participants for its sheer savagery and for their commanders' confusion, was the worst battle of the war, losing the last chance to bring the Commonwealth into the Confederacy.

Bloomsbury presents Joe Biden by Evan Osnos, read by Evan Osnos and David Remnick. The new biography of President Joe Biden by National Book Award winner and New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos – A Financial Times, Guardian and Daily Express Book of the Year 'A thoroughly readable primer'...

The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the 30-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians.

A poignant memoir exploring small town baseball as a lens into what’s right and wrong with modern America—written by an acclaimed journalist and Army Ranger who, after returning from Iraq to a painfully divided country, rediscovered its core values in the bleachers of a minor league ballpark...

In the romantic narrative of the Old West, two larger-than-life characters emerged as the perfect foils for each other - the rampant outlaw and the heroic peace officer. Without the villain, sheriffs would not have needed to uphold the law; and without the sheriff, villains would have had no law to break. Together, both personalities fought, lost, and triumphed amid shootouts, train robberies, and bank holdups against the backdrop of the lawless American frontier.

The Great Partnership has the power to change how we think about Confederate strategic decision-making and the value of personal relationships among senior leaders responsible for organizational survival. Those relationships in the Confederate high command were particularly critical for victory, especially the one that existed between the two great Army of Northern Virginia generals.