A thoughtful and informative look at moonshine whiskey and the characters who produced it in the Southern Appalachian region.

Stephen B. Oates discerns the historical truth from the mythical legend that surrounds Lincoln in this original and fascinating portrait of America's 16th president.

Folly Beach native Gretchen Stringer-Robinson takes the reader through a history of this delightful beach town covering the war years, the innocence of the fifties, the recession of the seventies, Hurricane Hugo and times in between. Visiting colorful characters and beautiful locations, this book will be enjoyed by both residents and visitors.

Located on the banks of the Chattahoochee, Columbus boasts a historic past that runs as deep as the river itself. But peer closely into the murkier parts of Columbus's history, and frightening stories begin to emerge. Join author and ghost hunter Faith Serafin for a chilling look into Columbus's haunted past. There's the regal Springer Opera House, where ghosts creep in the shadows of elaborate balconies. Visit the historic home of Columbus native and blues legend Ma Rainey, where some say the songstress can still be seen playing her original piano. Then there's the Phantom of Eubanks Field, whose ghastly apparition tries to frighten soldiers at Fort Benning. These terrifying tales, and more, await in this collection of haunting stories.

Missouri's state capital groans beneath the burden of its haunted heritage, from the shadow people of Native American folklore to Boogie Man Bill, Missouri's wild child. The muddy river waters hide the shifting graves of steamboat crews, like the one that went down with the Montana, and the savage scars of the Civil War still linger on the land. Join Janice Tremeear for the fascinating history behind Jefferson City's most chilling tales, including a visit to the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, where the vicious festered for 170 years.

Los Angeles and the movies grew up together, and a natural extension of the picture business was the premium presentation of the productthe biggest, best, and brightest theatres imaginable. The magnificent movie palaces along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles still represent the highest concentration of vintage theatres in the world. With Hollywood and the movies practically synonymous, the theatres in the studios neighborhood were state-of-the-art for showbiz, whether they were designed for film, vaudeville, or stage productions. From the elegant Orpheum and the exotic Graumans Chinese to the modest El Rey, this volume celebrates the architecture and social history of Los Angeless unique collection of historic theatres past and present. The common threads that connect them all, from the grandest movie palace to the smallest neighborhood theatre, are stories and the ghosts of audiences past waiting in the dark for the show to begin.

Ride the trolley up the ridge of Beacon Hill and discover one of South Seattle's most interesting districts. Unique among Seattle neighborhoods, Beacon Hill is a community where immigrants from all over the globe have settled side by side for over 100 years. This new book tells the story of the people and businesses of Beacon Hill in vintage photographs, the majority of which date before World War II. Readers will learn about the immigrants who worked on farms, opened shops, and labored in shipyards, the building of Jefferson Park, as well as the activism and political struggles that shaped the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

In an era when immigration was at its peak, the Fabre Line offered the only transatlantic route to southern New England. One of its most important ports was in Providence, Rhode Island. Nearly eighty-four thousand immigrants were admitted to the country between the years 1911 and 1934. Almost one in nine of these individuals elected to settle in Rhode Island after landing in Providence, amounting to around eleven thousand new residents. Most of these immigrants were from Portugal and Italy, and the Fabre Line kept up a brisk and successful business. However, both the line and the families hoping for a new life faced major obstacles in the form of World War I, the immigration restriction laws of the 1920s, and the Great Depression. Join authors Patrick T. Conley and William J. Jennings Jr. as they chronicle the history of the Fabre Line and its role in bringing new residents to the Ocean State.

As seen on "NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," CNN, MSNBC, and in the "Boston Globe, New York Times," and "USA Today"

It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century: the assassination of president John F. Kennedy

Within seven weeks of president Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched.

Now, in her selection of 250 of these astonishing letters, historian Ellen Fitzpatrick reveals a remarkable human record of that devastating moment, of Americans across generations, regions, races, political leanings, and religions, in mourning and crisis. Reflecting on their sense of loss, their fears, and their hopes, the authors of these letters wrote an elegy for the fallen president that captured the soul of the nation.

Located along the northern shore of scenic Long Island Sound, New Haven is perhaps best known for its diverse architectural history (it boasts every American style) and as an intellectual capital the city vied with Hartford to establish Yale University within its borders. In this pictorial history, Colin Caplan, author of "A Guide to Historic New Haven, Connecticut" and "New Haven: Then and Now" offers readers a glimpse into the character, elegance and bustle that define the city.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Haight-Ashbury first gained prominence as the gateway to Golden Gate Park; six decades later, it would anchor the worldwide cultural revolution that blossomed in the 1960s. Though synonymous with peace, love, and living outside the mainstream, its history goes back long before the Summer of Love. Starting as a dairy farm in San Franciscoas Outlands, the area saw a building boom of Queen Anne country homes for well-heeled San Franciscans and served as a refuge for victims of the 1906 earthquake and fire. Through world wars, industrial and cultural revolutions, the dot-com boom, and beyond, the Haight-Ashbury has one of the most fascinating histories of any place, anywhere. Here is the story of a vibrant neighborhood that attracts throngs of visitors, while maintaining a core community of families, young people, and long-timers.

Told here for the first time is the compelling story of the Bluff City during the Civil War. Historian and preservationist Mike Bunn takes you from the pivotal role Eufaula played in Alabama's secession and early enthusiasm for the Confederate cause to its aborted attempt to become the state's capital and its ultimate capture by Union forces, chronicling the effects of the conflict on Eufaulans along the way. "Civil War Eufaula "draws on a wide range of firsthand individual perspectives, including those of husbands and wives, political leaders, businessmen, journalists, soldiers, students and slaves, to produce a mosaic of observations on shared experiences. Together, they communicate what it was like to live in this riverside trading town during a prolonged and cataclysmic war. It is the story of ordinary people in extraordinary times.

At the heart of Fishtown is the final resting place of generations of Kensington and Fishtown residents. Founded prior to 1748, Palmer Cemetery is one of the oldest in Philadelphia. Interred here, and in Hanover Street and West Street Burial Grounds are soldiers from every war fought by colonists and then Americans, from the French and Indian War until Desert Storm. The fishing families that built the neighborhood, victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 and the ancestors of the Shibe family are also buried in these plots. Kenneth W. Milano walks the cemetery paths and reveals the secrets the stones keep with Palmer Cemetery and the Historic Burial Grounds of Kensington and Fishtown.

If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period and through to today. Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard.

Popular consensus says that the US rose over two centuries to Cold War victory and world domination, and is now in slow decline. But is this right? History's great civilisations have always lasted much longer, and for all its colossal power, the US was overshadowed by Europe until recently. What if this isn't the end? Bruno Macaes offers a compelling vision of America's future, both fascinating and unnerving. From the early American Republic, Macaes takes us to the turbulent present, when, he argues, America is finally forging its own path. We can see the birth pangs of this new civilisation in today's debates on guns, religion, foreign policy and the significance of Trump. What will its values be, and what will this new America look like?

Take a break from the bustle of Poplar and Beale and enjoy this easy ride down memory lane, recalling days when downtown gridlock was caused by streetcars and wagons and the Mid-South was ruled by the likes of the Chickasaws, Confederates, King Cotton and Crump. Few know Shelby County and its history like lifelong Memphian John E. Harkins, who expertly chronicles the city's unparalleled heritage and the individuals and groups who have kept its past alive through the decades. Discover the origins of the yellow fever epidemic, Memphis in May, Elmwood Cemetery, the heroes of Shelby County history and so much more in "Memphis Chronicles."

Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command is the most colorful and popular of Douglas Southall Freeman's works. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of the American Civil War, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee.

The Confederacy won resounding victories throughout the war, but seldom easily or without tremendous casualties. Death was always on the heels of fame, but the men who commanded -- among them Jackson, Longstreet, and Ewell -- developed as leaders and men. Lee's Lieutenants follows these men to the costly battle at Gettysburg, through the deepening twilight of the South's declining military might, and finally to the collapse of Lee's command and his formal surrender in 1865. To his unparalleled descriptions of men and operations, Dr. Freeman adds an insightful analysis of the lessons learned and their bearing upon the future military development of the nation. Accessible at last in a one-volume edition abridged by noted Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears, Lee's Lieutenants is essential reading for all Civil War buffs, students of war, and admirers of the historian's art as practiced at its very highest level.

Few stories in the annals of American counterculture are as intriguing or dramatic as that of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

Dubbed the "Hippie Mafia," the Brotherhood began in the mid-1960s as a small band of peace-loving, adventure-seeking surfers in Southern California. After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary's mantra of "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process.

Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied "Maui Wowie"), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border.

They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood's most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group's nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell's Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano.

Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group's surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, "Orange Sunshine" explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia.

From Harmond Husband's rebellious roots that led him to settle in and establish the village of Somerset to the Meyers family of maple fame, Pulling includes images from many of Somerset's treasured boroughs. As the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor wound its way through central Pennsylvania and coal mining towns like Boswell and Jerome sprang up across the countryside, Somerset County changed and evolved with the times. Pulling revives the lost memories of curiosities like the ?Ship of the Alleghenies? and extols the virtues of the snowmakers at the Seven Springs resort. She also recounts the tragic accident at the Quecreek mine that trapped nine miners for more than three days, and shares the sorrow and mourning of the community of Shanksville?forever changed on September 11. Join Sister Pulling as she relives the triumphs and tragedies, the heroes and headliners of this historic mountain county.

It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals--too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows. But the families of the confessed murderers hired Clarence Darrow, entrusting the lives of their sons to the most famous lawyer in America in what would be one of the most sensational criminal trials in the history of American justice.

Set against the backdrop of the 1920s--a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess in a lawless city on the brink of anarchy--For the Thrill of It draws the reader into a world of speakeasies and flappers, of gangsters and gin parties, with a spellbinding narrative of Jazz Age murder and mystery.

At one gilded moment in history, his fame was so great that he was known the world over by his nickname alone: Rubi. Pop songs were written about him. Women whom he had never met offered to leave their husbands for him. He had an eye for feminine beauty, particularly when it came with great wealth: Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Eva Peron, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. But he was a man's man as well, polo player and race-car driver, chumming around with the likes of Joe Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Oleg Cassini, Aly Khan, and King Farouk. He was also a jewel thief, and an intimate of one of the world's most bloodthirsty dictators. And when he died at the age of fifty-six--wrapping his sports car around a tree in the Bois de Boulogne--a glamorous era of white dinner jackets at El Morocco and celebrity for its own sake died along with him.

He was one of a kind, the last of his breed. And in The Last Playboy, author Shawn Levy brings the giddy, hedonistic, and utterly remarkable story of Porfirio Rubirosa to glorious Technicolor life.