All Titles

The Gambler 500 began as little more than a way to kill a weekend. Over beers in a local tavern, founder Tate Morgan and a couple of friends laid out the guidelines for an off-road navigational challenge. The catch? Each challenger's car had to have a purchase price of no more than $500. Soon enough, word started to spread, and the guys began to receive inquiries about participation from people all over the country. By 2022, the "OG Gambler" held every summer in Central Oregon was attracting thousands of participants from all over North America. Regional events sprang up in every corner of the U.S. Along the way, Gamblers have removed over one million pounds of garbage from America's public lands. More than anything, however, the aggressively tolerant alternative to traditional car culture has become a sort of surrogate family to all manner of people. Builders, rugged explorers, and more than a few lunatics all have carved out a place for themselves in the Gambler community. Collected within these pages are just a few of their stories.

"The Tell-Tale Heart," one of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous short stories, has inspired artists, filmmakers, and writers since its first publication in 1843. But it was two murders a decade apart that helped inspire Poe to write his macabre masterwork of psychological fiction.

In Salem, Massachusetts, in April 1830, the ruthless murder of an old and wealthy sea captain rattled the city's rich, sullied Salem's reputation, and helped launch America's obsession with true crime.

A decade later, in December 1840, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, a wealthy banker mysteriously disappeared. The discovery of his mangled corpse and the demeanor of his alleged killer made for great headlines in New York's new Penny Press and planted the seeds for Poe's masterpiece.

Poe's life during the period of these murders went from idealistic poet to soldier to struggling writer, set adrift by family rifts and his stubborn nature.

Exquisite Wickedness examines these two crimes, Poe's life during this period, the circumstances of the writing of his famous story, and an unbelievable betrayal whose effects have lasted far beyond the grave.

Although not yet fifty years old, Norfolk Southern boasts a rich heritage which includes many historic and famous names in railroading. The heritage of Norfolk Southern's predecessor lines can still be viewed trackside today, but time is running out. Unique signal designs, interlocking towers, whistle posts, mile markers, and lineside structures from the individual railroads that make up the modern-day NS system are disappearing rapidly as they have reached the end of their useful service lives and the railroad modernizes its infrastructure. Join photographer, Christopher Esposito, as he explores some of the railroad heritage that makes up the current Norfolk Southern Corp. From the coal fields of West Virginia, the open vistas of the scenic Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia, and the quaint farmlands and feed mills of Eastern Pennsylvania, the photographs shown in this book offer a look at the unique character and rich railroad history each state has to offer.

Photographer Joseph Bowman engages readers with a visual tour of the railroads of Western North Carolina. Enjoy scenes of busy mainline action on Norfolk Southern and CSX mainlines including unit coal and manifest freight action on the once busy Old Fort Loops. Joseph also documents several short line railroads which play a vital role in the local economies. Steam enthusiasts will not be disappointed, as multiple tourist railroads and mainline steam excursions are covered.

Joseph has been photographing trains since 2005 and has photographed many unique events including the last train to Lenoir, NC, along with the last excursions that Norfolk Southern allowed to be operated to Asheville, NC. The most featured section of railroad covered in the book has also experienced quite a few changes in recent years, and Joseph shares with us many scenes that haven't taken place in years, and as of being published, are not likely to happen any time in the near future, if ever again.

Maine has its share of industry, some current and some obsolete. Over the last century, many industrial practices have grown and flourished while others have vanished entirely. Likewise, state institutions have seen vast changes in their structures and methods of operation.

Changes to our industry and institutions have left behind artifacts of a bygone era. Many of these artifacts are demolished, replaced, or vanish further into obscurity. This book offers a visual tour of our forgotten past and practices in hopes of preserving history to prevent it from vanishing entirely. Readers will explore an abandoned jail built in 1873 (in which its first prisoner was convicted of killing two people with an axe), the North Maine Woods in search of ghost trains abandoned in the wilderness close to a century ago, and more.

Forgotten Industry and Institutions of Maine contains images, interesting facts, personal anecdotes, and the stories that make these places unique and give them their distinctive character.

Abandoned Route 66: Under a Western Moon is an unforgettable nocturnal journey on the most famous roadway in the United States, focusing on the Southwest. One of the earliest cross-country highways, Route 66 beckoned many in the United States to migrate west. As businesses and communities grew along the road, it became a beacon of liberation, opportunity, and eventually, loss. With the building of the faster Interstate Highway System, motorists bypassed Route 66. Prosperity evaporated, with many leaving their homes, markets, diners, gas stations, and kitschy roadside attractions to the elements. Wander with the author along the "Main Street of America" as he illuminates these forgotten locales with light, creating haunting dreamlike exposures of several minutes or more. If you are a fan of creative photography or the Mother Road, or have an insatiable curiosity for travel, Abandoned Route 66: Under a Western Moon invites you to climb in back, sit tight, and take hold for a surrealistic night escape with the top down.

American Prisoner of War Camps in Colorado describes the experiences of prisoners of war in the state, such as the story of two POWs who escaped from a camp in Trinidad. Was it treason, or were the three Japanese enemy alien sisters seduced by the German POWs who used their map? Stories of other escapes are detailed, such as two men who were shot to death as they tried to flee. All fifty-one prisoner of war camps and hospitals in Colorado during World War II are described, along with the names and burial locations of the seventeen German, Japanese, and Italian POWs who died in Colorado. These experiences are well documented through interviews with former prisoners and guards, translators, and civilians who worked with the prisoners of war. They are further documented by visitation reports from the Vatican Secret Archives, the prisoner of war files at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and by many books and articles published after the war by former prisoners, guards, and scholars.

The generally humane treatment of the prisoners, led by the Geneva Convention of 1929, as well as the friendship formed between the prisoners and their guards and the farmers whose land they worked, was essential to the development of our current positive relationships with the countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

For fifty years, Blytheville was home to a fleet of one of the most versatile pieces of machinery in history. From the Cuban Missile Crisis, through the Vietnam War and Korean Conflict, to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the early nineties, B-52 Stratofortresses cruised the sky, and stayed on alert to be America's first line of defense. Now that America no longer has a need for its "Global Shield," many United States Air Force bases lay dormant and decaying, sinking into the earth from which they came.

From its early beginnings as farmland to a highly secure, fiercely patrolled Strategic Air Command base, to overgrown lawns and decrepit buildings filled with asbestos, to becoming the site of the National Cold War Center, follow along as author Gage Fears digs up history on a crucial part of Arkansas and military history to tell the story of the long abandoned Eaker Air Force Base.

Abandoned Arkansas: Eaker Air Force Base is a unique collection containing new information, interviews of veterans that served on the base, and rare photographs.

With 145 color photographs and maps, Northbound Lights: Tracks Across Michigan and Wisconsin presents a visual history of contemporary changes to the railroad networks across these two states in the Great Lakes region. Michigan-born photojournalist, D. C. Jesse Burkhardt, carries readers on a journey that chronicles rail operations in Wisconsin and Michigan. The primary focus extends from the 1970s to 2022.

Northbound Lights explores the demise of several historic railroads and spotlights shortline and regional railroads that have moved in to handle operations on routes in danger of being lost. In recent decades, dramatic alterations in the region's transportation maps have taken place as companies including Soo Line, Milwaukee Road, Chicago & NorthWestern, Green Bay & Western, Detroit & Mackinac, Penn Central, and others struggled to survive. Numerous rail lines were abandoned or taken over by expanding shortlines such as Huron & Eastern and Escanaba & Lake Superior, or by regional railroads exemplified by Great Lakes Central and Wisconsin Central. Other railroads and key routes were swallowed up by large carriers including Union Pacific, Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, CSX, and Norfolk Southern.