State & Local

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence.

This exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads....

From the creators of the New York Times bestselling audio series Campfire Stories and MeatEater’s American History comes a new audiobook original that plunges listeners into the untamed world of a celebrated and misunderstood group of nineteenth-century outdoorsmen: the Mountain Men.

The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death....

Genteel society ladies who compare notes on their husbands' suicides. A hilariously foul-mouthed black drag queen....

Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of....

From one of Outside magazine’s “Literary All-Stars” comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever through the Grand Canyon, atop the legendary Colorado River flood of 1983.

It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere s75 miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the US government - but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades....

A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long.

From the author of Ghost Soldiers comes a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West....

Dodger Stadium is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball. The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican American communities....

The very strange but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a 1960s hippie utopia. Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place....

Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Massachusetts....

At the dawn of the 20th century, a great confidence suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms....

Read by the author and set in one of the world’s most beautiful landscapes, Kuleana is the story of an award-winning journalist’s effort to hold on to her family’s ancestral Hawaiian lands—and find herself along the way.

In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them....

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award-winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows....

A gripping first-hand account of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump written by the acclaimed journalist who was only a few feet away from the stage when the gunshots began.

Author Cory Franklin, MD, who headed the hospital's intensive care unit from the 1970s through the 1990s, shares his most unique and bizarre experiences....

The definitive, inside story of the Idaho murders from acclaimed bestselling author Howard Blum, whose groundbreaking coverage of the story was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation....

A humorous and rousing set of literal and figurative sojourns as well as a mission statement about comprehending, protecting, and truly experiencing the outdoors, fueled by three journeys undertaken by actor, humorist, and New York Times best-selling author Nick Offerman....

If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That's not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep seated in the American past as the founding ideals.

The number one New York Times best seller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal) - the settling of the Northwest Territory....

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200....

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.

“Psycho Killer.” “Take Me to the River.” “Road to Nowhere.” Few artists have had the lasting impact and relevance of Talking Heads. One of the foundational bands of downtown New York’s 1970s music scene, Talking Heads have endured as a musical and cultural force for decades, their unique brand of transcendent, experimental rock a lingering influence on popular music—despite having disbanded over thirty years ago. Now on the 50th anniversary of the band’s formation, acclaimed music biographer and contributor to The New Yorker Jonathan Gould offers the definitive story of Talking Heads.

From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family’s land in Hawai‘i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui’s east side—given by King Kamehameha III in 1848—extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past. When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire.

In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. Horrifyingly violent Indian attacks had all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and many traumatized refugees—including the main accusers of witches—had fled to communities like Salem. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders, defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, pondered how God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages.

In August 2017, over a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klan members, and neo-Confederates descended on a small southern city to protest the pending removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Within an hour of their arrival, the city’s historic downtown was a scene of bedlam as armored far-right cadres battled activists in the streets. Before the weekend was over, a neo-Nazi had driven a car into a throng of counterprotesters, killing a young woman and injuring dozens.

From the Lowcountry's first recorded duel to old-fashioned summers at the "hottest spot in town," this book will captivate you with stories of people, events, and places that have all but vanished from memory. Find out the real history behind some of Charleston's beloved mansions and learn about the early plantations and their owners. Join the authors as they relate the riots and romance, the preservation and politics—and even a ghost story—from Charleston's hidden history.

In 1819, a young man outwitted death at the hands of John and Lavinia Fisher and sparked the hunt for Charleston's most notorious serial killers. Former homicide investigator Bruce Orr follows the story of the Fishers, from the initial police raid on their Six Mile Inn with its reportedly grisly cellar to the murderous couple's incarceration and execution at the squalid Old City Jail. Yet there still may be more sinister deeds left unpunished, an overzealous sheriff, corrupt officials, and documents only recently discovered all suggest that there is more to the tale.

In 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to notorious Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. They brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder and companion Joey Odom built the "castle in the woods" in the Trion forest after Scudder left his position as professor at Loyola. He brought with him twelve thousand doses of LSD. Rumors of drug use and Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. The murders set the stage for a trial vibrant with local lore.

The spring of 1903 proved disastrous for the Murphy family. On April 22, the infant Ruth Murphy died in her crib. Within an hour, her mother, Gertrude, experienced a violent spasm before she, too, died. Ten days later, John Murphy followed his wife and child to the grave after suffering from a crippling convulsion. While neighbors whispered about a curse and physicians feared a contagious disease, Kalkaska County sheriff John W. Creighton and prosecuting attorney Ernest C. Smith searched for answers. As they probed deeper into the suspicious deaths, they uncovered a wicked web of intrigue.

New Mexico's Spanish legacy has informed the cultural traditions of one of the last states to join the union for more than four hundred years, or before the alluring capital of Santa Fe was founded in 1610. The fame the region gained from artist Georgia O'Keefe, writers Lew Wallace and D. H. Lawrence, and pistolero Billy the Kid has made New Mexico an international tourist destination.

This book takes a look at some of the crimes in Macon County, Tennessee between 1960 and 1984. Most of these short articles deal with what we usually classify as crimes – murder, blackmail, theft, and the like. But the reader should be aware that some of the stories deal with “crimes” in a broader sense of the word. They include some of the times when people fought to improve the responsiveness of government and some of the times when injured people sought recompence from corporations.

When ships under the command of white Europeans first sailed into the Delaware Bay in 1609, southeastern Pennsylvania's documented history of the strange and unusual began. This book tackles seven true "dark histories" from Chester and Delaware counties, which include tales of murder, witchcraft, cannibalism, tragic accidents, and macabre events that actually happened in the Greater Philadelphia region. All stories are meticulously researched and placed within the greater context of Pennsylvania and world history.

A study of the spiritual practices developed by the nineteenth-century American Transcendentalist movement and a case for their necessity today.

When the Allen brothers sold Houston's first lots, the city became a magnet for enterprising tycoons and opportunistic crooks alike. As the young city grew, a scourge of crime and vice accompanied the success of oil and real estate. The Bayou City's seedy side—flashing Bowie knives, privileged bad boys, hardened prostitutes, and unchecked serial killers—established its hold. From a young Clyde Barrow to the Man Who Killed Halloween, Houston's past is filled with bloody tales, heartbreaking loss, and despicable deeds.

Tall Tales and Cornstalks is Iowa like you’ve never seen it. A place where ghost steamboats drift silently upriver, bulls bend rivers with their horns, and something with wings once clawed its way out of a coal mine near Van Meter. This isn’t your eighth-grade state history. Here, you’ll meet cryptids that lurk in cornfields, angels that turn black as night, and a hermit in the cliffs who may or may not have been talking to God. Some of these stories are straight out of newspaper clippings. Some come from the dusty corners of folklore. And a few? Well, they just felt too good not to ...

In August 1862, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania quickly responded to President Lincoln’s request for more troops. An overwhelming response of volunteers would provide the Union with eighteen infantry regiments that would serve for a period of nine months. Individual motivations to enlist were as varied as were the volunteers themselves. Many wanted the attractive recruiting bounties, and others sought the adventure. The majority in the recruiting lines were there with the sentiments of “right” and “duty”, a symbol of their honor and manhood. These devoted groups of mostly central...

Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Pennsylvania’s Juniata Valley, this sweeping narrative masterfully blends historical fiction and documented events to illuminate the early American frontier. Juniata: A Chronicle of Land, Legacy, and Witness traces the sacred bond between people and place—beginning with the spiritual worldview of pre-Columbian shamans, through the clash and co-existence of Lenape and Tuscarora tribes, to the arrival of Swiss Anabaptist settlers who sought peace in a land scarred by war. Anchored by the deeply human experiences of the Longacre, Varner, De Lancey, ...

Where justice meets corruption—and one prosecutor stands at the crossroads. In the shadows of jazz clubs and beneath the canopy of moss-draped oaks, a far more sinister rhythm pulsed through the streets of New Orleans: the grip of organized crime. Mobster-ville Magistrate: The Story Behind the Story pulls back the curtain on a world few have truly seen—one where American Mafia influence shaped politics, police, and even the courts. This powerful nonfiction companion to the novel Magistrate in Mobster-ville reveals the true-life inspirations behind a gripping tale of legal warfare and ...

Wings over Dixie Sequel to West from Dixie Wings Over Dixie picks up with Cody Ashby, the son of legendary Confederate officer Caleb Ashby, a quiet, capable man caught between the past he never knew and the future he’s building by hand. With the help of mountain man Cat Jenkins, Cody sets out to retrace his father’s footsteps and confront the legacy that still echoes across the West Now, back in the mountains his father once roamed, Cody is laying down a legacy of his own, one not carved by a rifle or saddle, but by the whine of a new engine and the rise of modern aviation. Alongside ...