New Book Releases

Name: Disaster on Lake Erie:
Brand: Alvin F. Oickle
SKU: 9781609490980
Price: 21.99 USD
Availability: InStock

We’re always on the hunt for the next great American history book. When we find it, you’ll see about it here, with our new book releases. We release new history books each month in a variety of subjects and series. Browse through all of our newest titles below, and discover your next favorite history book at Arcadia Publishing! [View all New Book Releases]

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Disaster on Lake Erie:

Disaster on the Potomac

Disaster Off Martha's Vineyard:

Disaster in Lawrence

Outbreak in Washington, D.C.:

Colorado and the Silver Crash

Explosion on the Potomac

Yellow Fever on Galveston Island

Explosion at Morgan:

Fire Strikes the Chicago Stock Yards

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Disaster on Lake Erie:

9781609490980

$21.99

On August 9, 1841, the steamship Erie, one of the most elegant and fastest sailing between Buffalo and Chicago, departed carrying 340 passengers. Many were Swiss and German immigrants, planning to start new lives in America's heartland most never made it. The Erie erupted in flames during the night, and despite the heroic efforts of the crew of the Dewitt Clinton, 254 lives were lost. As news of this disaster spread, internationally renowned artists and writers, including Charles Dickens, were inspired to reflect on the lives lost. Historian Alvin F. Oickle's minute-by-minute account weaves together the tragic journey of the passengers, the legend that developed in the aftermath and the fury of a fire on an ocean-like lake.

Disaster on the Potomac

9781596298132

$21.99

For passengers of the steamboat Wawaset, August 8, 1873, began with a pleasant cruise from Washington, D.C., down the Potomac River. As the Wawaset came into sight of a small Virginia landing, fire broke out below decks, and frantic passengers leapt from the flames only to be pulled down by the swift waters. Author Alvin F. Oickle puts a human face to the tragedy as he profiles some of the seventy-five who perished, among them young mother Alethea Gray and six members of the Reed family. With a fast-paced style and firsthand accounts, Oickle masterfully narrates the last run of the Wawaset against the backdrop of a tense post-Civil War society.

Disaster Off Martha's Vineyard:

9781609495107

$21.99

With its rocky coast and treacherous shoals, shipwrecks were a common occurrence in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. Few claimed as many lives as the City of Columbus. The night was clear and the route familiar for Captain Schuyler Wright and his experienced crew as they sailed a ship equipped with the latest technology. Yet with all this, the City of Columbus went down with 103 souls. Over a century later, Eric Takakjian and the Quest Marine Services team located the wreckage of the City of Columbus on the north ledge of the Devil's Bridge, off the southern tip of Gay Head. Historian Thomas Dresser takes us into the icy waters of the Atlantic as he recounts the terrible chain of events that led to disaster on that fateful night.

Disaster in Lawrence

9781596295063

$21.99

The destruction was unimaginable. Workers in nearby factories watched with horror as the Pemberton Mill buckled and then collapsed, trapping more than six hundred workers, many of them women and children. Word of the disaster spread quickly and volunteers rushed to the scene. As survivors called out for help, a lantern fell, and within minutes fire engulfed the building, burning those trapped inside. It took days for rescuers to complete the grim task of removing the charred bodies of the dead. Alvin F. Oickle's riveting account illustrates why, nearly a century and a half later, the Pemberton collapse is still considered one of the worst industrial calamities in American history.

Outbreak in Washington, D.C.:

9781626196384

$21.99

The National was once the grandest hotel in the capital. In 1857, it twice hosted President-elect James Buchanan and his advisors, and on both occasions, most of the party was quickly stricken by an acute illness. Over the course of several months, hundreds fell ill, and over thirty died from what became known as the National Hotel disease. Buchanan barely recovered enough to give his inauguration speech. Rumors ran rampant across the city and the nation. Some claimed that the illness was born of a sewage effluvia," while others darkly speculated about an assassination attempt by either abolitionists or southern slaveowners intent on war. Author Kerry Walters investigates the mysteries of the National Hotel disease."

Colorado and the Silver Crash

9781467147576

$21.99

A catastrophic depression engulfed Colorado in 1893. The government's decision to adopt the gold standard and stop buying silver hit the mining industry like a cave-in. Unemployment reached 90 percent in Leadville, a city built on silver. Strikes by union miners in Cripple Creek and Leadville led to destruction and death. Political parties split along battle lines of gold versus silver. By 1898, the country had begun to recover, but silver mining was never the same. Using firsthand commentary and more than one hundred historic photographs, John Steinle skillfully commemorates the story of Coloradans trapped in the unprecedented social, economic and political conflict of America's first great depression.

Explosion on the Potomac

9781626191976

$21.99

In 1844, the USS Princeton" was the most technologically sophisticated warship in the world. Its captain, Robert Stockton, and President John Tyler were both zealous expansionists, and they hoped that it would be the forerunner in a formidable steam-powered fleet. On a Potomac cruise intended to impress power brokers, the ship's main gun--the Peacemaker--exploded as the vessel neared Mount Vernon. Eight died horribly, while twenty others were injured. Two of Tyler's most important cabinet members were instantly lost, and the president himself had a near miss--making it the worst physical disaster to befall a presidential administration. The tragedy set off an unpredictable wave of events that cost Tyler a second term, nearly scuttled plans to add Texas to the Union and stirred up sectional rancor that drove the nation closer to civil war. Author Kerry Walters chronicles this little-known disaster that altered the course of the nation's history."

Yellow Fever on Galveston Island

9781467146555

$21.99

Jan Johnson provides a definitive account of Galveston's fight against outbreaks of Yellow Fever, which transformed an island paradise into the City of Dreadful Death.

In the summer of Galveston's founding year, a mysterious malady accompanied by black vomit descended upon the inhabitants. Names for the devastating plague came quick and fast as the body count rose. Saffron Scourge. Bronze John. Yellow Jack. Yellow Fever. The disease's cause and cure remained elusive, as did the medical institutions Galveston would need treat the illness. Four thousand souls perished in nine epidemics between 1839 and 1867. By the time of Galveston's final Yellow Fever outbreak in 1903, however, residents were better informed and equipped. Discover the key figures and pivotal events of the island city's experience with the mosquito-borne disease.

Explosion at Morgan:

9781609495176

$21.99

While World War I raged in Europe, America scrambled to supply the Allies with ammunition, and several munitions plants were constructed near the Jersey Shore. The hastily built plants hummed with hardly a mishap until the fateful night of October 4, 1918, when a series of explosions killed one hundred people. Firemen and other volunteers were powerless to stop the destruction as it devastated the Morgan-South Amboy area and terrified the surrounding region. Strangely, though, this woeful disaster has been forgotten by history. New Jersey historian Randall Gabrielan re-creates this terrifying night and its aftermath in the context of Middlesex County's role in the Great War.

Fire Strikes the Chicago Stock Yards

9781609499075

$21.99

Wade into the endless smoke of Chicago's Union Stock Yards, the site of nearly three hundred extra-alarm fires before its closure in 1971, including some of the most disastrous conflagrations of a city famous for fire. In 1910, twenty-one firemen and three civilians were killed in a blaze at a beef warehouse--the largest death toll for an organized fire department in the nation prior to 9/11. The meatpackers who ran the yards considered the constant threat of fire as part of the cost of doing business, shrugging it off with an, "It's all right, we're fully covered." For the firefighters who were forced to plunge into the flames again and again, it was an entirely different matter.