Author R. Wayne Ayers has written “Florida’s Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age,” featuring the grand hotels built by Henry M. Flagler and Henry B. Plant, who played a dominant role in opening Florida tourism.

Arcadia Publishing is a company that has a catalog of over 3,000 titles in print. They are a major publisher of books on regional topics. Their Images of America series is not only award winning, the titles are top sellers. One of the latest books in the Images of America series isn't about a particular geographic location. Rather, this one is on a specific group of people. This is the largest single law enforcement group for a single city in the U.S. This group is the Los Angeles Police Department. The title of this new book in the series is Images of America: Los Angeles Police Department. It was written by Thomas G. Hays and Arthur W. Sjoquist. These two gentlemen are members of the Los Angeles Police Historical Society.

Many archival images of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Warm Springs have been released for the first time in the Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing. The book, Warm Springs, captures the true spirit and wonderful history of the waters that brought FDR to Georgia where he received treatment for polio and developed his ideas that would become programs of the New Deal. The photographs chronicle the history of the springs from the early days of Native Americans through the era of FDR and the Little White House where America's foremost political leader of the 20th century died. Warm Springs, Georgia (PRWEB) December 25, 2005 -- Warm Springs has become part of American story. Movies, documentaries and biographies have been produced there and a worldwide audience has gained a renewed interest in this remarkable community. Most of the attention has been given to FDR and little to the actual springs and town until now.

Jewish Life in Akron is a much more straightforward name for a book. The pictorial, part of Arcadia Publishing's ``Images of America'' series, was put together by Arlene Cohen Rossen, a former instructor at the University of Akron, and attorney Beverly Magilavy Rose.

Many of Perrysburg's historic buildings are now available on paper.

Open a carton of milk and you'll be celebrating a tiny piece of Antioch history. The scientists at Fibreboard Research in Antioch invented the nifty packaging by applying wax coatings to cardboard containers in 1950. The patented product replaced glass bottles and tin cans for liquid packaging and was perfect for ice cream. The vibrancy of Antioch's past is never more alive than in the black and white photos in the new book that traces the city's origins.

Not a seed, but an acorn was planted in Jerry A. McCoy’s mind in the mid-1990s, when he and a group of residents raised money to have a 1937 post office mural restored and placed in the Silver Spring Library. During that time, a woman approached him and said, ‘‘Silver Spring has no history,” McCoy said.

PICTURING THE PAST: In high school and college it was our full intention to become a marine biologist when we grew up. And things went well for a while until math became our Vietnam and journalism became our Canada. That's the short version of our vocational veering. But, before that, we spent tons of our free time combing through the tide pools and splash zones of the Pacific coast, where we knew the genus-species names of hundreds of creatures and plants that grew in almost ridiculous abundance in some of our favorite places — and most of our favorite places were around San Pedro, especially at the foot of Point Fermin and White Point, where we'd find everything —abalone, giant keyhole limpets, chestnut cowries, tropical-colored nudibranchs, sea stars, sea urchins, sea anemones, chitons the size of small canoes. And all around was the rest of the stuff of waterfronts — war vessels, a fleet of fishing boats, a government breakwater that didn't bother us much, ferryboats, boat yards and lighthouses. All of that and more is celebrated in "San Pedro Bay," the latest in the always-handsome, high-quality series of pictorial paperbacks published by Arcadia in South Carolina.

The Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, a group with more than 1300 members, annually bestows this award "...on a regional journalist who has written articulately, responsibly, and with foresight on the contributions of architects to the built environment." The award will be given tonight at Davio's restaurant, 111 South 17th Street, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. We are happy to say that much of Thom Nickels' writing has, for many years, found its way into our publications and that this award couldn't have come at a better time.

William Jannke, local historian, has spent years of collecting postcards with photographs of Watertown documenting major events and people in the city. A snapshot of his collection can be seen in the new book, “Postcard History Series: Watertown.”

Michael Smookler has lived every author's dream. He had a publisher come to him. Smookler, a 23-year Montara resident, had published "Montara: A Pictorial History" in 2004 through American Printing. Arcadia Publishing editor John Poultnoy took notice and invited Smookler to do another book for Arcadia

Hats Aizawa, now 81 and considered an elder in Japantown, is just a tot in bloomers sitting on a tricycle in a 1924 photograph. Aizawa gets a kick out of that photo, which is featured in “San Francisco’s Japantown,” a book of historic photographs published last month. Aizawa, born on Post and Buchanan streets, has lived through many of the battles, tragedies and triumphs documented in the book, part of the Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing.

Although it’s a few months shy of Lakewood’s 10th birthday celebration, the city recently got an early gift: its first history book. Two journalists from the now-defunct Lakewood Journal got together and chronicled the city’s past, from the birth of Fort Steilacoom in the mid-1800s to incorporation in 1996. The result was “Images of America: Lakewood,” a 128-page history that showcases around 200 photos of city icons such as Western State Hospital, American Lake, and the old Tacoma Speedway that burned in 1920. Authors Steve Dunkelberger, now editor of the Business Examiner, and Walter Neary, now a Lakewood City Councilman, talked with The News Tribune about their love of history, Lakewood’s rich past and new projects in the future.

New book compiles images of the city as it evolved between 1890 and 1950. Before whizzing cars on Interstate 4, snaking subdivisions and fast-food chains populated our landscape, Lakeland was a small town in a rural county. The city was flecked with orange groves, dirt roads and acres of land surrounding bountiful lakes, and those images are captured in vintage postcards in a new book called "Lakeland," a part of the "Postcard History Series" from Arcadia Publishing ($20).

Do you remember the old Michigan Theatre in Battle Creek? Do you know where the old downtown Woolworth's and Kresge's stores were located? How about the old Fieldstone Hospital? There's a new book out that will show you just what those old places looked like and how those spaces look now. Kurt Thornton, 50, has released a second book, "Then & Now, Battle Creek."

SAN FRANCISCO HAS more than its share of local-history buffs. Maybe because the city's past is so colorful, what with the shaky earthquakes and the shady ladies. Maybe it's because only about one out of every four people you meet in San Francisco was born in the Bay Area, and all those Johnnies-come-lately think that immersing themselves in San Francisco's past will help them pass as natives. Maybe it's just that San Francisco, unlike some other California cities we could name, actually has a history that stretches back farther than the latest box-office numbers.