Arcadia Bestsellers

A captivating visual guide to New Orleans's history!

Hailed as being one of the most comprehensive collections of photos, paintings, and drawings on its release in 1971, this educational and entertaining selection is now in paperback! From the city's French and Spanish beginnings to American forces fighting off British soldiers in the War of 1812, this is truly a fascinating compilation. These pages chronicle major historical moments along with the architecture, jazz, scandals, duels, cuisine, and fine arts that make New Orleans an amazing city to behold.

The story of firefighting in New York City is one of danger, tradition, pride, excitement, and tragedy. It is also the story of man's triumph over destructive forces.

From the gaslight days of horse-drawn steam engines to the World Trade Center tragedy of 2001, the heroic men and women who make up the city's most dynamic public service have risked and often lost their lives in order to protect and serve the people of New York City.New York City Firefighting: 1901-2001 chronicles the proudest fire department in America. The proximity of buildings in the city streets and the construction materials made each fire especially dangerous, but determined firefighters never hesitated to battle the flames and rescue the victims. Later, facing unprecedented heights and unparalleled danger, firefighters in New York City were called upon to battle infernos in the first skyscrapers, often using the most rudimentary equipment and barely protected from the flames. In its most trying moments, the Fire Department of New York responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, dutifully rushing into the towers to save as many lives as possible and ultimately losing hundreds of their own.

Journey through the mountains with North Carolinian Alice Sink as she investigates the history of life in western North Carolina that traditional accounts have overlooked.

Hidden History of the Western North Carolina Mountains reveals the people, customs and folklore of the region, exploring bygone traditions, fascinating real-life characters and tales so tall they rival the peaks that shape the landscape. What was life like for workers in the gristmills? Was Abraham Lincoln actually born in Bostic in Rutherford County? Who was Amos Owens, and why was he known as the "Cherry Bounce King"? Buried deep within the hills and hollers of North Carolina's majestic Appalachian Mountains are stories, traditions and a proud cultural heritage unlike any other.

The Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital was more than a building; it embodied an entire era of uniquely American history, from the unparalleled humanitarian efforts of Dorothea Dix to the revolutionary architectural concepts of Thomas Story Kirkbride.

After well over a century of service, Greystone was left abandoned in 2008. From the time it closed until its demolition in 2015, Greystone became the focal point of a passionate preservation effort that drew national attention and served to spark the public's interest in historical asylum preservation. Many of the images contained in this book were rescued from the basement of Greystone in 2002 and have never been seen by the public. They appear courtesy of the Morris Plains Museum and its staff, who spent many hours digitally archiving the photographs so that future generations may better know Greystone's history.

Peter F. Stevens offers an entertaining and compelling portrait of the Irish immigrant saga and pays homage to the overlooked episodes of the Boston Irish experience.

When it comes to Irish America, certain names spring to mind - Kennedy, O'Neill, and Curley testify to the proverbial footsteps of the Gael in Boston. However, few people know of Sister Mary Anthony O'Connell, whose medical prowess carried her from the convent to the Civil War battlefields, earning her the nickname the Boston Irish Florence Nightingale, or of Barney McGinniskin, Boston's first Irish cop, who proudly roared at every roll call, McGinniskin from the bogs of Ireland - present! Along with acclaim or notoriety, many forgotten Irish Americans garnered numerous historical firsts.

Historians Victoria Cosner Love and author Lorelei Shannon uncover the truth behind one of New Orleans' most famous stories and one of America's most haunted houses.

On April 10, 1834 Firefighters smashed through a padlocked attic door in the burning home of Creole society couple Delphine and Louis Lalaurie. The horrible discovery of chained and mutilated slaves spawned a legend that has endured for over 150 years. But what really happened in the Lalaurie home? Who was "Mad Madame Lalaurie," and what motivated her to commit such ghastly atrocities, if in fact she really did?

Join author & reporter Kelly Sullivan Pezza as she investigates and recounts the murder of 5-year old Maggie Sheffield.

On a summer day in 1893, little Maggie Sheffield was murdered. Maggie's own father did the unthinkable against a backdrop of laughter and barrel organ music at Rocky Point Amusement Park. The tragedy aroused a strange reaction from the peaceable community of Warwick, Rhode Island. Many seemed to be more concerned for the murderer, Frank Sheffield, than for his young victim. Frank was rumored to be insane or addicted to drugs, and after a trial, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The murder did not tarnish Rocky Point's reputation as a premier destination, and the park operated until 1995. Investigating official records and newspaper archives, author Kelly Sullivan Pezza uncovers the facts and oddities behind a grim crime in Rhode Island's summer paradise.

Sonya Huber, author of the award-winning Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, and Other Essays from a Nervous System, offers a candid, lyrical look inside the unsung world of exurban Illinois.New Lenox, Illinois, is a small town deep in the corn grid of the Midwest, where it runs up against the grid of south Chicagoland, a placeless location marked by geographical flatness and dwindling industry. It's also where Sonya Huber grew up, and in the twenty essays collected here, she lovingly explores the ways New Lenox--and the Midwest more generally--has come to define her life. Here, you'll find portraits of Huber's parents as they tirelessly run a small business, homages to the Gen-X joys of wearing flannel, secret insights about being a Pizza Hut waitress, and odes to the ecstasy of blasting classic rock as your car hurls along I-80. Whether she's writing about All in the Family, detailing the region's influence on David Foster Wallace, or exploring the poetry embedded in a can of Miller High Life, her vision is astute and her prose convincing. Sometimes experimental and always inventive, Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook takes seriously Chicagoland's farthest reaches--gritty, sweeping, a region full of its own distinct feelings of almostness--and transforms them into a map of the heart, a ramshackle territory marked by memory, family, regret, determination, and wonderment

From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up.

Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee—and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet—he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart’s explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.

A lyrical narrative reminiscent of Saeed Jones’s How We Fight for Our Lives and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.

Illustrating the first 75 years of Chicago's influential Polish neighborhood.

Polish Downtown is Chicago's oldest Polish settlement and was the capital of American Polonia from the 1870s through the first half of the 20th century. Nearly all Polish undertakings of any consequence in the U.S. during that time either started or were directed from this part of Chicago's near northwest side. Chicago's Polish Downtown features some of the most beautiful churches in Chicago - St. Stanislaus Kostka, Holy Trinity and St. John Cantius - stunning examples of Renaissance and Baroque Revival architecture that form part of the largest concentration of Polish parishes in Chicago. The headquarters for almost every major Polish organization in America were clustered within blocks of each other and four Polish-language daily newspapers were published here. The heart of the photographic collection in this book is from the extensive library and archives of the Polish Museum of America, still located in the neighborhood today.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park has some of the highest, oldest, and most picturesque mountain peaks and ridges in the United States. Discover its history.

Its mountains, rivers, and scenic gorges constitute a formidable barrier between Tennessee and North Carolina. The struggle to acquire the land for the park from 10 large lumber companies and hundreds of small landholders started in 1923 and lasted more than 15 years. More than half of the 500,000 acres acquired for the park had been logged before the park's dedication in 1940, but thousands of acres of old growth forest still survive. One of the most biologically diverse regions in North America-with thousands of species of plant and animal life, including 125 species of native trees-the park was designated an International Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations in 1976 and a World Heritage Site in 1983.

When the world comes to Tennessee, the world is going to have a good time.

Once referred to as the "scruffy little city by the Tennessee River," Knoxville hosted the world's fair from May 1 through October 31, 1982, and provided one big party for people to visit from all over to witness the live entertainment, parades, displays, exhibits, musical and sporting events, food, costumes, rides, games, and arcades. Based on the theme "Energy Turns the World," Expo '82 was the first world's fair to be held in the southeastern United States in 97 years, hosting 22 countries and more than 11 million people. The news reports of the day declared the "World Came to Knoxville" as it hosted the official international exposition, fully licensed and sanctioned by the Bureau des Expositions Internationales in Paris, France.

Through stories of people, music, and dreams, King Records of Cincinnati tells the history of a recording company which launched countless musical careers.

Starting with a few songs and a dream in 1943, King Records--a leading American independent--launched musical careers from a shabby brick factory on Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati's Evanston neighborhood. Founder Sydney Nathan recorded country singers Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Wayne Raney, and others and later added black acts such as James Brown and the Famous Flames, Bull Moose Jackson, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Lonnie Johnson, and Freddy King. Meanwhile, King also explored polka, jazz, bluegrass, comedy, gospel, pop, and instrumental music--anything that Nathan could sell. Although King's Cincinnati factory closed in 1971, the company's diverse catalog of roots music had already become a phenomenon. Its legacy lives on in hundreds of classic recordings that are prized by collectors and musicians.

Looming on the outskirts of Philadelphia County since 1906, the mental hospital commonly known as ""Byberry"" stood abandoned for 16 years before being demolished in 2006.

Like many other mental hospitals and asylums of its time, Byberry began with the best of intentions. Despite having its own self-sustaining farm, bowling alleys, barbershop, ice cream parlor, post office, and baseball team, conditions in the hospital were abysmal and even compared to Nazi concentration camps. Throughout its history, the hospital served as an educational institution for Philadelphia's medical, nursing, and psychology students; was the site of a World War II Civilian Public Service conscientious objector unit; and a volunteering hot spot for local churches, schools, and Girl and Boy Scout troops, before becoming what it is most remembered for today. At its peak in the 1960s, Byberry was home to more than 6,000 patients and employer to more than 800, but now its only residents are ghosts and the urban explorers excited to take a risk in the desiccated husk of the hospital. This book provides an unprecedented window into the good, the bad, the unusual, and the forgotten history of Byberry.

New York City, one of the world's premier urban centers, is also home to the world's most famous and storied municipal law enforcement service: the NYPD.

Policing in New York is as old as the city itself, although much has changed since the first Dutch rattle watch patrolled streets in the 1620s. Technological improvements, advancing professional standards, and historical moments like the 1898 consolidation of New York City and the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, have each profoundly changed the way New York City police officers do their jobs. Still, as New York City Police emphasizes, certain elements of ""the job"" remain true through the decades and centuries. Being a police officer in New York City has always involved a certain amount of danger, sacrifice, and public coordination.

Detroit's auto heritage is known worldwide, but this fascinating city's history runs much deeper.

Step inside the tiny recording studio where Berry Gordy, a young entrepreneur who faced tremendous prejudice, created a music empire that broke down racial barriers. Tour Art Deco masterpieces so spectacular they're called "cathedrals" to commerce and finance. Walk in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Cobo Hall, where he first delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Join Karin Risko for an intimate tour of the city that put the world on wheels and discover an amazing history of innovation, philanthropy, social justice and culture.

Reading Trains and Trolleys documents the impact of railroad and trolley networks on Reading and adjoining communities.

Rail transportation has been part of daily life in Reading since the 1830s. Reading Trains and Trolleys portrays the good old days of the Philadelphia & Reading Railway (reorganized as the Reading Company in 1923), the Schuylkill Valley Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Mount Penn Gravity Railroad, the Neversink Mountain Railroad, the Reading City Passenger Railway, and the Reading Traction Company. The Reading Railroad gained widespread recognition as a property for sale on the Monopoly board, but the history of trains and trolleys in Reading goes well beyond that iconography. Reading Trains and Trolleys documents the impact of railroad and trolley networks on Reading and adjoining communities, including photographs of the interior of the locomotive shop and the carbarn at Tenth and Exeter Streets, views of the Walnut Street yard before and after the Outer Station was constructed, and views from the Swinging Bridge, which spanned the yard by the Outer Station. The Historical Society of Berks County's collection of rail photographs includes many never-before-published images of diverse scenes in and around Reading.