New Book Releases

Greenwich in the seventeenth century was a lost world with tythingmen and meeting warners, wild horse hunters, herdsmen, townsmen, pounders and planters.

Faced with an ever-changing environment, citizens set many new-world boundaries. Farmers created common fields along the coast and redesigned wilderness. They balanced religious and civic authority, private and common interests and financial inequities across communities. The first comers found it more challenging to please their own than it was to please their God. Their departure from the past fashioned an idealized, yet still imperfect, new society the Puritans proudly called the Greenwich Plantation. Author Missy Wolfe details the strategies and setbacks of creating community in colonial America's First Period.

Over fifty thousand Connecticut soldiers served in the Union army during the Civil War, yet their stories are nearly forgotten today.

Among the regiments that served, at least forty sets of brothers perished from battlefield wounds or disease. Little known is the 16th Connecticut chaplain who, as prisoner of war, boldly disregarded a Rebel commander's order forbidding him to pray aloud for President Lincoln. Then there is the story of the 7th Connecticut private who murdered a fellow soldier in the heat of battle and believed the man's ghost returned to torment him. Seven soldiers from Connecticut tragically drowned two weeks after the war officially ended when their ship collided with another vessel on the Potomac. Join author John Banks as he shines a light on many of these forgotten Connecticut Yankees.

Author Eric D. Lehman chronicles the lives of two dozen men and women who left their marks on Connecticut and the world as a whole.

Noah Webster, Charles Goodyear, P.T. Barnum and Katharine Hepburn all have Connecticut in common. Like so many other residents, they had an inventive spirit and drive that changed the course of history for the rest of the state. Some of the state's natives, like Eli Whitney and Henry C. Lee, pioneered new methods. Prudence Crandall and Helen Keller championed the rights of the underprivileged. Some, like Frederick Law Olmsted and Sol LeWitt, changed our perception of the world.

Connecticut's history is full of engaging and fascinating stories, rocks that are national monuments, the "people's sculptor," football players on chapel finials, moons on the Travelers calendars, artists Frederic Church and Eric Sloane and even a Thanksgiving Day touch football game with a future president.

These are tales from Greenwich to Enfield, from Sharon to Old Lyme and so much in between. Follow along with historian Wilson Faude in this "must-have" Connecticut book as he traverses the state in search of hidden history.

While Middlesex County is one of the most historic communities in the nation, some of its past is little known.

Researchers found dinosaur tracks in Middlefield that date back 200 million years. The author of Dr. Dolittle, Hugh Lofting, lived in Killingworth, and a young Dr. Seuss spent summers in Clinton. Constance Baker Motley, the first female African American federal judge, resided in Chester. A Portland lake has water levels that fluctuate for no apparent reason. An Essex blacksmith shop was America's oldest continuously run family business. Local authors Robert and Kathleen Hubbard reveal these and many other unforgettable stories.

The celebrated history of New Haven often overshadows its fascinating and forgotten past.

The Elm City was home to America's first woman dentist, an architect who designed the tallest twin towers in the world and a medical student who used toy parts to create an artificial heart pump. The city's share of disasters includes Connecticut's worst aviation crash, a zookeeper who was mauled to death and a fire at the Rialto Theater. Local authors Robert and Kathleen Hubbard reveal the rich and fascinating cultural legacies of one of New England's most treasured cities.

A delightful collection delivering the curious history of a Connecticut town bursting with character.

Welcome to Rowayton, a vibrant community nestled on the shores of Long Island Sound and encompassed by the city of Norwalk, Connecticut. Great steamships once delivered thousands of visitors daily to Roton Point to enjoy one of the premier amusement parks on the eastern seaboard. Roton Point was also home to the nation's oldest continuously operated multi-hull racing club and was the birthplace of the winged sail design for C-class catamarans. In this collection of vignettes, rumrunners, a missing two-hundred-foot steamship, a national scandal and the notorious ""Long Island Express"" hurricane of 1938 that almost destroyed Roton Point all introduce readers to a grand time in New England history.

The lives of the distinguished citizens and memories of the Connecticut Gold Coast town are chronicled here.

The historic community of Greenwich is nestled along Connecticut's famed Gold Coast. The shores and waves of Long Island Sound draw people to its unique seaside, which also maintains a peaceful ""residents only"" beach. As a coastal community the opportunities for businesses were plentiful, from the exporting of oysters to the Palmer Engine Company who supplied engines for every lifeboat during WWII. This pristine waterfront is home to historic Tod's Point and has a plethora of elite Yacht Clubs dotting the shoreline. Author Karen Jewell chronicles the lives of distinguished citizens and the memories of yesteryear in her latest coastal narrative detailing the Greenwich waterfront.

A charming collection of Bridgeport stories and historic images bring this eccentric, enchanting history to life.

In the late nineteenth century, P.T. Barnum was known worldwide for his traveling circus, but to the city of Bridgeport he meant much more. The city's mayor and benefactor, Barnum was also a mastermind at urban planning. Thus, amid Bridgeport's growing industrial factories, orchestras played from the bandstand at Seaside Park and bucolic hills surrounded Bunnell's Pond. In this collection of narratives, Eric D. Lehman captures the city's natural beauty and richly eccentric history. From the brave women of the Black Rock Lighthouse to war heroes of 'the nation's arsenal', from 'the tiniest general', Tom Thumb, to the tragic death of Jumbo the elephant, these are the best stories from Connecticut's 'Park City.'