Historic postcards take you on an eye-candy tour of Cape May's past. Hand-colored images portray bonneted ladies in long dresses treading the boardwalk, and the great Victorian hotels where they stayed. Hand-tinted photography dating back one hundred years opens an keyhole to the past, when the streets were still paved with sand and traversed by horse and carriage. An extensive collection of images portrays the U.S. Naval Training Station. Photo chromes further trace the development of the Washington Street Mall, the restoration of the Emlen Mansion, the sinking of the Atlantus off the point, and the transformation of the Convention Center. Imagery and text trace this wonderful town's story, from nostalgic, sepia-toned past through its renaissance as one of East Coast's most popular, and distinctive historic resort towns.

When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records-recently declared a national treasure-are now being translated. Drawing on this remarkable archive, Russell Shorto has created a gripping narrative-a story of global sweep centered on a wilderness called Manhattan-that transforms our understanding of early America.
The Dutch colony pre-dated the "original" thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.

Everybody knows about Virginia and Vanessa, but did you realise that Sussex is (and always has been) the birthplace, home or workplace for many more inspiring, intriguing and formidable women - from royal mistresses to pioneering women doctors, and from educators and philanthropists to Brighton 'dippers' and cross-dressing music-hall stars? There's an impressively large pool of Sussex sisters who have been doing it for themselves over the centuries; Ann Kramer has selected 30 of the best and brings them to vibrant life in a browsable collection of concise, informative and entertaining essays designed to make you want to find out more. This work offers 30 brief but entertainingly informative biographies of inspiring Sussex women. It offers tips and pointers on where you can find out more about the women and their work. It is written by a Sussex woman and published author of feminist history.

A personal account of life in the orbit of Mao and Zhao En-Lai and one woman's effort to tell what it was like to be at the center of the storm. The history of China in the twentieth century is comprised of a long series of shocks: the 1911 revolution, the civil war between the communists and the nationalists, the Japanese invasion, the revolution, the various catastrophic campaigns initiated by Chairman Mao between 1949 and 1976, its great opening to the world under Deng, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yuan-tsung Chen, who is now 90, lived through most of it, and at certain points in close proximity to the seat of communist power. Born in Shanghai in 1929, she came to know Zhou En-Lai-second only to Mao in importance-as a young girl while living in Chongqing, where Chiang Kai-Shek's government had relocated to, during the war against Japan. That connection to Zhou helped her save her husband's life in Cultural Revolution. After the communists took power, she obtained a job in one of the culture ministries. While there, she frequently engaged with the upper echelon of the party and was a first-hand witness to some of the purges that the regime regularly initiated. Eventually, the commissar she worked under was denounced in 1957, and she barely escaped being purged herself. Later, during Cultural Revolution, she and her husband were purged and sent to live in a rough, poor area. She and her husband finally moved to Hong Kong, with Zhou's special permission, in 1971. A first-hand account of what life was like in the period before the revolution and in Mao's China, The Secret Listener gives a unique perspective on the era, and Chen's vantage point provides us with a new perspective on the Maoist regime-one of the most radical political experiments in modern history and a force that genuinely changed the world.

Before the onset of his irreversible decline, Eddie Socket always suspected he was on the verge of something. Now that "something" has arrived in the form of Merrit Mather, an attractive older gentleman of impeccable taste in everything from sweaters to his numerous sexual conquests. That Merrit happens to be the lover of Eddie's agitated boss, Saul, hardly fazes the smitten Eddie; that the elusive Merrit loses interest in Eddie with dizzying speed hardly dims his ardor. While Eddie continues his futile chase, he finds solace in his roommate, Polly, involved in her own implausible affair with a self-involved banker. Both Eddie and Polly eventually conclude that solitude is their best option. But even that is not possible as Eddie finds his life taking an unexpected turn-a turn that that serves as the catalyst for Eddie, love-ravaged Polly, and the indomitable Saul to reclaim their lives. First published in 1989 and winner of the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Debut Novel, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket is one of the first novels to respond to the global AIDS crisis. A comedy of absurdist horror, it weaponizes the comic as a way of intensifying the tragic aspects of AIDS, which were especially acute in the early 1980s, and the scars of which are still visible today.

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure. With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds. But there was one problem: a rival in the salvage business threatened his dominance. Smith hired arsonists to destroy the rival; when they botched the job, he sent three gunmen, but the robbery they planned was a bloody fiasco. Investigators were convinced that Smith was guilty, but many were skeptical that the newly elected and inexperienced Earle could get a conviction. Amid the courtroom drama and underworld plots the book describes, Willie Nelson makes a cameo. So do the private eyes, hired guns, and madams who kept Austin not only weird but also riddled with vice. An extraordinary true story, Last Gangster in Austin paints an unusual picture of the Texas capital as a place that was wild, wonderful, and as crooked as the dirt road to paradise.

This classic, illustrated book tells the story of the famous faithful Skye terrier, Greyfriars Bobby, who watched over his master's grave for 14 years in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh. The Corbies series brings the heroes and rogues, triumphs and tragedies of Scottish history vibrantly into life.

If you love magic and adventure, here is the book for you. In this treasure trove of tales, storyteller Fiona Collins has collected the best-loved stories from the misty, magical mountains, rushing rivers and green rolling hills of North Wales. In these stories you will meet dragons, giants, wizards, monsters and one extremely powerful witch - and of course the Tylwyth Teg, the Welsh fairies. From 'Once upon a time...' to 'Happy ever after' you will be transported to North Wales, where even the stones have stories to tell.

After the Revolutionary War ended, the new American nation grappled with a question about its identity: Were the states sovereign entities or subordinates to a powerful federal government? The War of 1812 brought this vexing issue into sharp relief, as a national government intent on waging an unpopular war confronted a populace in Massachusetts that was vigorously opposed to it. Maine, which at the time was part of Massachusetts, served as the battleground in this political struggle.Joshua M. Smith recounts an innovative history of the war, focusing on how it specifically affected what was then called the District of Maine. Drawing on archival materials from the United States, Britain, and Canada, Smith exposes the bitter experience of Maine's citizens during that conflict as they endured multiple hardships, including starvation, heavy taxes, smuggling, treason, and enemy occupation. War's inherent miseries, along with a changing relationship between regional and national identities, gave rise to a statehood movement that rejected a Boston-centric worldview in favor of a broadly American identity.

The incredible story of the man and legend who has come to symbolize the continuing pursuit of justice for Blacks in the United States Through the 1980s, the mainstream press portrayed the Reverend Al Sharpton as a buffoon, a fake minister, a hustler, an opportunist, a demagogue, a race traitor, and an anti-Semite. Today, Sharpton occupies a throne that would have shocked the white newspaper reporters who covered him forty years ago. A mesmerizing story of astounding transformation, craftiness, and survival, King Al follows Reverend Sharpton's life trajectory, from his early life as a boy preacher to his present moment as the most popular Black American activist/minister/cable news host. In the 1980s, Rev. Al created controversies that would have doomed a lesser man to the dustbin of history. Among these controversies were his work with the FBI as the agency attempted to locate Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur; and his involvement in the 1987 Tawana Brawley episode. Regarding the Brawley matter, a white prosecutor sued Sharpton, successfully, for falsely accusing him of having raped the then-fifteen-year-old Brawley. It was the white press, in its glory days, that created the podium from which Sharpton became both famous and infamous. Those reporters would joke that the most dangerous place in New York was between Al Sharpton and a television camera. But it was those reporters who made Sharpton the media figure he is today. Today, as host of MSNBC's PoliticsNation news program, Sharpton has more news viewers than those reporters ever had readers. The Reverend Al's rise to respectability is a testament to an endurance and boldness steeped in Black American history. Born in Brooklyn to parents from the old slave-holding South, he transformed himself into one of the most respected and politically influential Blacks in the United States. In his in-depth coverage, author Ron Howell tells the stories of Sharpton's ascendance to the throne. He tells us about the glory years of American newspapers, when Sharpton began his rise. And he tells us about the politicians who intersected with Sharpton as he climbed the ladder. King Al is an engaging read about the late-twentieth-century history of New York City politics and race relations, as well as about the remarkable staying power of the colorful, politically skillful, and enigmatic Sharpton.

This is a book about Glasgow, but not your everyday history book. Glasgow By the Way But is a contemporary series of essays examining different aspects of Glasgow in a historical and cultural context, revealing a unique, amusing and sometimes critical, perspective of Cairney's beloved city. Those who remember John Cairney's performances and have read his other books will enjoy the insightful anecdotes from Cairney's career.

Miami, one of the most popular cities in Florida, is seen through 338 images, including over 140 pairs of Past and Present views featuring vintage postcards and modern-day photographs. Many of Miami's early structures remain, but in dramatically different settings: the Miami News Tower, City Hall, Fort Dallas, and Olympic Theater. Tour the famous Pier 5 and the Bayside Marketplace. Stroll Flagler Street, Biscayne Boulevard, and South Beach's Ocean Drive. Colorful text provides insight to the area's history. This is a journey into the past for both residents who remember Miami's early days and those who are new to Miami, as well as being a great resource for history buffs.

An inspiring and uplifting tale of women on the home front, for fans of Nancy Revell and Vicki Beeby. By the author of Lily's War. On the ground, the crowd of men stood with their mouths agape, watching the wings soar into the air, the tail kept impressively steady and the small plane with a woman at the controls disappearing into the May sunshine. It's 1942 and Bobby Hollis has joined the Air Transport Auxiliary in a team known as the 'glamour girls' - amazing women who pilot aircraft all around the country. Bobby always wanted to escape life on the family farm and the ATA seemed like the perfect opportunity for her. But there's always something standing in her way. Like a demanding father, who wants to marry her off to a rich man. And the family secrets that threaten to engulf everything. As Bobby navigates her way through life, and love, she has to learn that controlling a huge, four-engined bomber might just be easier than controlling her own life . . . 'What a brilliant read! Shirley Mann has given such a well-researched and comprehensive picture of the lives of the courageous women of the ATA, and Bobby is a wonderful heroine. Brave, clever and opinionated, I absolutely loved spending time with her.' Ginny Bell, author of The Dover Cafe at War 'Shirley Mann has given us in Bobby Hollis an inspiration. Plucky and resourceful as she delivers her WW2 aircraft, Bobby is exactly the sort of person you'd want at your side in real life today. This is a perfect read when all you want to do is curl up to enjoy a lovely novel. Brava!' Kitty Danton, author of The Evacuee Christmas 'Rich in period detail, nostalgia, intrigue, romance and the realities of life in a perilous and unpredictable corner of the home front, Bobby's War is a saga full of history, heart and our proud national heritage.' Lancashire Evening Post Don't miss Lily's War, and Hannah's War, available now. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Readers love Bobby's War: 'I loved this book. A fabulous read.' Netgalley reviewer 'If you love family sagas based in the war, this is the book for you.' Netgalley reviewer 'An emotional journey throughout.' Netgalley reviewer Praise for Lily's War: '[The story] read so true to me and I really didn't want to put it down . . . It may be fiction but those things could, and did, happen.' Vera Morgan, wartime WAAF 'An impeccably researched and uplifting story of love, loss and courage: a heartwarming read that will captivate all those who love a good war story.' Clare Harvey, author of The Gunner Girl 'A wonderful, inspiring story. I can't wait to read more from Shirley Mann.' Sheila Newberry

On a winter's day in the mid-1970s the photographer Marcia Bricker Halperin sought warm refuge and, camera in hand, passed through the revolving doors of Dubrow's Cafeteria on Kings Highway. There, between the magical mirrored walls and steaming coffee urns, she found herself as if on a theater set, looking out at a tableau of memorable Brooklyn faces. Enchanted, Halperin returned to Dubrow's again and again. In Kibbitz & Nosh, Halperin reminds us of the days when she would order a coffee, converse with the denizens of Dubrow's on Kings Highway and at its other New York City location in Manhattan's Garment District, and in that relaxed atmosphere execute candid photographs. In keeping with the work of Vivian Maier and Robert Frank, these black-and-white images taken during the waning days of New York City's legendary cafeteria culture are revealing and empathetic. Dubrow's was a restaurant-cum-social club for a generation of New Yorkers; it was a place to chat with friends, an escape from the confines of the family apartment, and a space to dream while looking out onto the traffic on Kings Highway or Seventh Avenue. Beyond Dubrow's on the sidewalks and in the streets, the gritty and fantastic New York of the 1970s appears, ready to come through the revolving doors to order a coffee and a blintz. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies and the lauded historian of the Jewish-American experience Deborah Dash Moore provide essays that illuminate and contextualize Halperin's poignant photographs. Kibbitz & Nosh, with a whiff of nostalgia and full of incisive visual commentary, is a revealing return to this lost third place, the essential cafeteria.

The archetypal Routemaster is arguably the most recognised vehicle in the world, as witnessed at the recent Beijing Olympic handover ceremony. Buses have been operating on London's streets since 1829, originally with horse-drawn omnibuses, and the London Omnibus Company was founded in 1855 to regulate the various services. The first motorised buses made an appearance in 1902 with the LGOC beginning to manufacture the buses itself two years later. For six decades London went its own way with specially designed buses. More recent innovations such as the 'bendy' bus have not been popular, but today practicality of pushchair and wheelchair access has consigned the Routemaster to a nostalgic, but much-loved, position. With full-colour photographs, this book comprehensively tells the story behind London's famous red buses.

In the early 1900s, three small-town midwestern playwrights helped shepherd American theatre into the modern era. Together, they created the renowned Provincetown Players collective, which not only launched many careers but also had the power to affect US social, cultural, and political beliefs. The philosophical and political orientations of Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell generated a theatre practice marked by experimentalism, collaboration, leftist cultural critique, rebellion, liberation, and community engagement. In Three Midwestern Playwrights, Marcia Noe situates the origin of the Provincetown aesthetic in Davenport, Iowa, a Mississippi River town. All three playwrights recognized that radical politics sometimes begat radical chic, and several of their plays satirize the faddish elements of the progressive political, social, and cultural movements they were active in. Three Midwestern Playwrights brings the players to life and deftly illustrates how Dell, Cook, and Glaspell joined early 20th-century midwestern radicalism with East Coast avant-garde drama, resulting in a fresh and energetic contribution to American theatre.

Tour historic Fort Lauderdale, Florida through 276 color postcard images that depict the growth of the "Venice of America" and "Gateway to the Everglades." Be transported to earlier days before urban sprawl and renewal. From the 1900s through the 1960s, images of Seminoles, farming, tourism, the beach, buildings, and the New River will appeal to everyone interested in Florida history, architecture, and water activities.

In a little more than a hundred years, a wild and desolate barrier island in Maryland became a teeming resort city. The story began in 1875 when a group of Eastern Shore, Baltimore, and Philadelphia businessmen held a grand opening of a five-story frame building called the Atlantic Hotel, and offered surrounding lots for sale at $25 each. Skeptics observing the scene predicted disaster with the first bad storm. What follows is a narrative of shifting sands-and shifting fortunes-as the city weathered natural and economic setbacks and advances to become, every summer, Maryland's second-largest city. The narrative draws extensively on the memoirs of early resort residents and, most of all, on conservations with people who have given the town its distinctive character. This is an appealing portrait of an outstanding resort that has been a magnet to vacationers for more than a century.

This is a book about the end of childhood. Much of it is drawn directly from a diary the author kept while he was a bright but insecure freshman at Harvard in the 1950s. From these pages emerges a precise description of the raw, half-understood experience of late adolescence--the anguish and arguments, the rivalry and anxiety about sex, the facile cynicism and desperate fumblings for purpose, the bull sessions held late at night--just as Peter Prescott recorded them only hours after the event.

These diary excerpts are contained in a narrative that examines that freshman experience from a vantage point of twenty years. Thus, we are able to look at the past with a double perspective: Th e exact record, unclouded by memory or nostalgia, of what was said and done is set in a structure that reveals the form of the experience. Th e result is an ironic, witty, and often moving book.

Writing with some compassion and even more asperity, Peter S. Prescott not only captures the confl icts and emotions of a single year, but probes beneath the surface of memory to explore certain tribal customs and rites of passage as they are played out in the classrooms and living quarters of the college. A few famous people--T. S. Eliot and Edith Sitwell among them--play brief parts in this chronicle, but young Prescott's attention was primarily engaged in his struggle with his extravagant roommates and an assortment of eccentric undergraduates.

"Peter S. Prescott" was book review editor for "Newsweek." His books include "Encounters with American Culture" (Volumes 1 and 2), and "The Child Savers: Juvenile Justice Observed." His critical essays about books and other cultural phenomena have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers.

"Anne Lake Prescott" is Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of English at Barnard College. She is a specialist in the English Renaissance and is affi liated with the comparative literature program and the medieval and Renaissance studies program at Barnard College. Her most recent book is "Renaissance Historicisms: Essays in Honor of Arthur F. Kinney."

For over a century New Englanders have taken to the slopes in search of ways to enjoy the coldest months, and skiing has deep roots in the region. In the late nineteenth century Scandinavian immigrants worked to educate snowbound locals on how to ski, make equipment, and prepare trails. Soon thereafter, colleges across the Northeast built world-class ski programs, massive jumps were constructed in Brattleboro and Berlin, and dozens of ski areas-big and small-cropped up from the 1930s through the 1980s.Traveling the Old Ski Tracks of New England offers a fascinating history of downhill, cross-country, and backcountry skiing across the region and its leading personalities. Moving from popular destinations like Stowe, Cannon, Bromley, and Mount Washington to the less intimidating hills surrounding Boston, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, E. John B. Allen also recovers the forgotten stories of ski areas that have been abandoned in the face of changing tastes and a warming climate.

Nikolaus Pevsner described Berwick-upon-Tweed as 'one of the most exciting towns in England' [Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of England: Northumberland (1957), 88] - a place where an absorbing historical tale can still be read in the dense fabric of its old streets and buildings. It attracts not only day-trippers and holidaymakers but also new residents who have learnt to appreciate the spirit of the place. But outsiders all too easily confine their attention to the space within the impressive Elizabethan ramparts, while local people are sometimes unaware or dismissive of the wider significance of the very things that they know so intimately. Berwick deserves to be known better, and to be celebrated not just as a vivid reminder of what many other towns were once like, but more especially as something unique and distinctive, shaped by a peculiar combination of historical and geographical circumstances. This distinctiveness is acutely apparent as one passes between Berwick and the contrasting, but historically intertwined, settlements of Tweedmouth and Spittal. This book presents something of the wealth of historic interest encapsulated in Berwick, Tweedmouth and Spittal, and explains how these places came to assume such varied and distinctive forms. Above all, it urges that a town anxious for stability and prosperity in the future must know where it has come from as well as where it is going.

West Chester, a picturesque Pennsylvania town and Chester County seat, has retained all the charm of more than two centuries of existence. This book is the perfect companion while strolling through its streets on a beautiful day. Text uncovers the history of significant sites, and accompanying photographs make the town come to life. Six tours reveal over 75 sites in 150 stunning color photographs. Maps for each tour help readers navigate this southeastern Pennsylvania town. Residents and visitors alike will cherish this volume, which is the perfect memento for lovers of history, architecture, and small-town living.