New Book Releases

In this collection of her History Matters" columns from the American Journal, Andrea Vasquez takes readers back to the early days of Puritans and pioneers, when stately forests, wildlife and the land around Westbrook. Discover the secret burial place of Colonel Thomas Westbrook, the legacies of Westbrook benefactors Joseph Walker and Samuel Dennis Warren and the all-but-forgotten works of master sculptor Benjamin Paul Akers, whose life was tragically cut short at the height of his career. Vasquez preserves the memories and stories of these sons and daughters of Westbrook, from Cornelia Warren, a forward-thinking philanthropist and women's advocate, to Fabius Maximus Ray, one of Westbrook's first local historians."

For over two centuries, many a helmsman felt a surge of deliverance upon first spotting the Quoddy Lighthouse, guardian of the easternmost point of the United States. During the foggy summer months, residents of Lubec take comfort in the symphony of tolling bells and crashing surf along the rocky Maine coast, where Native Americans once hunted seals and generations of fishermen tugged their boats ashore. In this collection of articles, historian Ronald Pesha revives the events and people of Lubec's past, uncovering stories such as the eighteenth-century naval hero and founder of the U.S. Coast Guard, Hopley Yeaton, and the nineteenth-century Lubec signature quilt. From the Quoddy Belle's California gold mine expedition to the colorful history of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Cat Food house, these tales from Lubec history will delight all readers.

On April 30, 1911, a fire ignited in Frank Green's hay shed that changed the city of Bangor forever. From the ashes of the Great Fire, the logging and mill town emerged as a modernized metropolis. In this collection of retrospective articles, Wayne E. Reilly takes a look at the town of Bangor in the years before the fire, when illegal barrooms and brothels were as rampant as the outbreaks of typhoid and smallpox. He explores Bangor in its boomtown days, when ice harvesting and logging were thriving industries, steamboats ferried passengers between cities and a lively theatre scene drew audiences to see the "little Broadway in the Great North Woods." One look through this vibrant window into the past will leave you with your nose pressed to the glass, nostalgic for the olden days of Maine's Queen City.

Penobscot Bay is the jewel of mid-coast Maine, a landscape of close-knit communities and picturesque ports whose scenery is matched only by its rich history. Granite from the quarries on Vinalhaven has built bridges, banks and monuments in twenty-three states. Ships launched in Searsport and Belfast have traveled the world. Harry Gratwick explores these and other episodes in Penobscot Bay's past, from the first recorded solar eclipse in Islesboro in 1780 to a covert meeting between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941. He also recalls some of the region's most indelible characters and traditions, including South Orrington's Earl 'on the River' Morrill and the Vinalhaven North Haven basketball rivalry. Describing war, sport, industry and tragedy, he captures the essence of Penobscot Bay.