Marketplace

Discover the Motor City before the motor: a muddy port town full of grog shops, horse races, haphazard cemeteries and enterprising bootstrappers from all over the world.

Meet the argumentative French fugitive who founded the city, the tobacco magnate who haunts his shuttered factory, the gambler prankster millionaire who built a monument to himself, the governor who brought his scholarly library with him on canoe expeditions and the historians who helped create the story of Detroit as we know it: one of the oldest, rowdiest and most enigmatic cities in the Midwest.

With fewer than a thousand remaining in the United States, the covered bridges of Alabama are an important relic of the paths our ancestors took.

Alabama's covered bridges are reminiscent of a more romantic time, when people rode in horse-drawn buggies and couples stole kisses beneath their roofs. But they are also keepers of history - structures built by former slaves and Civil War soldiers. Such places are steeped in legend, including tales of ghostly children and the hanging of a sheriff turned outlaw. Just eleven historic covered bridges survive in Alabama - the oldest dating to the 1850s - but dozens of more recently constructed spans dot the landscape. Wil Elrick and Kelly Kazek provide photos and detailed information on more than fifty Alabama bridges, reveal the fate of the state's lost bridges and delve into the haunting legends surrounding these nostalgic structures.

Spring in Maryland means one thing to its many residents: lacrosse.

As much a part of the state as crab cakes and the Chesapeake Bay, lacrosse is king at every level, from youth rec and club to high school, college and the pros. Since the state first fielded teams in the 1870s, Marylanders have played with a unique combination of finesse, speed and passion. The ""Maryland style"" of play built a long line of national powerhouses at all levels. With extensive research and dozens of photographs, journalist Tom Flynn traces the long history of the sport in Maryland from its Native American roots to its first arrival in the state and on to the modern highlights. Fans will rediscover their many past champions and gain a glimpse of teams that promise to elevate the sport's status as the pride of the Old Line State.

Writer H.L. Mencken--the Sage of Baltimore--called her a "wicked seaport'? but where "the old charm, in truth, still survives.'?

Neither Southern nor Northern, Baltimore has charted her own course through the American Experience. The spires of the nation's first cathedral rose into her sky, and the first blood of the Civil War fell on her streets. Here, enslaved Frederick Douglass toiled before fleeing to freedom and Billie Holiday learned to sing. Baltimore's clippers plied the seven seas while her pioneering railroads opened the prairie West. The city that birthed "The Star-Spangled Banner'? also gave us Babe Ruth and the bottle cap. This guide navigates nearly 300 years of colorful history--from Johns Hopkins' learned philanthropy to the raucous camp of John Waters, and from modest rowhouses to the marbled mansions of the Gilded Age.

Let local authors Brennen Jensen and Tom Chalkey introduce you to Mencken's "ancient and solid'? city.

Temperance workers had their work cut out for them in the Upper Peninsula. It was a wild and woolly place where moonshiners, bootleggers and rumrunners thrived.

Al Capone and the Purple Gang came north to keep Canadian whiskey passing through Sault Ste. Marie to Chicago and Detroit. Federal enforcement agent John Fillion double-crossed both his office and the bootleggers. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island survived due to gambling and fine Canadian whiskey brought in by rumrunners, sometimes assisted by the Coast Guard. Author Russell M. Magnaghi dives into the raucous history of Yooper Prohibition.

Local author Kristin Thrower Stowe guides a series of expeditions through the River City's past.

Best known as the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond's history encompasses much more than the Civil War. Visit the state capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson and tour Shockoe Bottom, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. Follow the route that enslaved people took from the ships to the auction block on the Richmond Slave Trail. Go back to Gilded Age Richmond at the Jefferson Hotel and learn the history of the statues that once lined the famed Monument Avenue. See less-visited sites like the Maggie Walker Home and the Black History Museum in the historically African American Jackson Ward neighborhood.

Discover four hundred years of Maine's history through the tales of its unique residents.

Maine history would be bare but for the contributions of hardy and impassioned individuals whose lives make up the story of Maine's "hidden history." Author Harry Gratwick creates intimate and detailed portraits of these Mainers, from the controversial missionary Sebastien Rale to Woolwich native William Phips, whose seafaring attacks against French Canada earned him the first governorship of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Gratwick also profiles inventors such as Robert Benjamin Lewis, an African American from Gardiner who patented a hair growth product in the 1830s, and Margaret Knight, a York native who defied nineteenth-century sexism to earn the nickname "the female Edison." From soprano Lillian Nordica, who left Farmington to become the most glamorous American opera singer of her day, to slugger George "Piano Legs" Gore, the only Mainer to have ever won a Major League batting championship.

Legends, Lore and True Tales of Utah explores an eclectic past

Ordinary history books often fail to address the obscure or the unexplained, leaving questions buried in annals of yesteryear. Where were Utah's mythical monsters, including Bigfoot, spotted? How did 'Schoolmarm's Bloomers' become a state symbol? What created the Lagoon Amusement Park's 'dark side'? Why did 'Frankenstein' prowl through the Cache town of Clarkston? Does Sardine Canyon hide the state's fishiest story? Exactly what was the 'Lakemobile' that rolled through the Great Salt Lake? When and why did BYU temporarily ban football? How is it that the first college basketball team to ever play in the state was all women, and they beat the men?

Retired journalist Lynn Arave presents this unique collection, including over a hundred photographs, of the Beehive State's offbeat history.

For over two centuries, Arlington County has been a steadfast center for government institutions and a vibrant part of the Washington, D.C., community.

Many notable figures made their home in the area, like Supreme Court chief justice Warren Burger, General George "Blood 'n' Guts" Patton and a beauty queen who almost married crooner Dean Martin. The drama of Virginia's first school integration unfolded in Arlington beginning in the late 1950s. In the 1960s, two motorcycle gangs clashed in public at a suburban shopping center. Local author, historian and "Our Man in Arlington" Charlie Clark uncovers the vivid, and hidden, history of a capital community.

An amazing piece of Brainerd’s proud past

For over eighty years, the Northern Pacific Railroad Shops was the largest employer in the Brainerd area. After the Depression, the NP provided steady jobs for Brainerd railroad workers, whose paychecks contributed to the growth of Brainerd. The NP Shops built freight cars and conducted maintenance and disassembly of the NP’s rolling stock. The workforce of several trades called themselves “shop dogs.” Shop dogs built a workplace culture with its own jokes, stories, ethics, and nicknames – an unintended circumstance could result in a nickname, such as Scoop Swanson or the Soo Line Bull, that stuck to a shop dog for the rest of his life. After shop dogs retired and the NP shops closed, their nicknames and stories live on. Author Bob Roscoe gathers the stories from this vital piece of Brainerd history.

Southwest Louisiana is famous for time-honored gatherings that celebrate its French Acadian heritage. The culinary star of these gatherings? The pig.

Whether it's a boucherie, the Cochon de Lait in Mansura or Chef John Folse's Fete des Bouchers, where an army of chefs step back 300 years to demonstrate how to make blood boudin and smoked sausage, ever resourceful Cajuns use virtually every part of the pig in various savory delights. Author Dixie Poche' traverses Cajun country to dive into the recipes and stories behind regional specialties such as boudin, cracklings, gumbo and hogs head cheese. From the Smoked Meats Festival in Ville Platte to Thibodaux's Bourgeois Meat Market, where miles of boudin have been produced since 1891, this is a mouth-watering dive into Cajun devotion to the pig.

Discover the staggeringly true story of how the first Navajo silversmiths fed and freed a nation.

"Old Pounder," they called him -- the very first Navajo silversmith. Yet Herrero Delgadito's greatest legacy is measured in lives, not ounces: the scores of Navajo women and children he plucked out of slavery in 1864, the hundreds of exiles he risked everything to feed in 1865 and the thousands of people he helped lead back home in 1868. A remarkable portrait of human resilience, Delgadito's story upends conventional narratives of the West, revealing an illicit slave system that began with the Conquistadors and reached its apex under the Union Army. Even as US officials fought to end slavery in the South, they weaponized human trafficking against the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Matt Fitzsimons traces the trajectory of the prisoners of Bosque Redondo who forged a path to freedom.

Historic, haunted, chilling tales of the town of Richmond as told by one of Virginia's most respected paranormal investigators!

With over four hundred years of history, Richmond abounds with ghostly tales and ghastly deeds from the past. Step into the shadows and take a tour of thirteen of Richmond's most haunted sites. Visit Church Hill, home of the famous St. John's Church, and discover the events that led to the tragic tunnel collapse of 1925.

Discover the long-forgotten Civil Warhospitals of Shockoe Bottom, where hundreds of wounded soldiers met their end. Feel the icy chill at the bottom of a staircase where a young apprentice was murdered in cold blood by his jealous master in 1826.

These stories and more await as you discover the mysterious, tragic and terrifying events of Richmond's dark past.""

Beyond the façade of stately Louisiana platations are stories of hope and subjugation, tragedy and suffering, shame and perseverance and war and conquest.

After sixteen workers chopped down most of the Houmas House's ancient oak trees, referred to as "the Gentlemen," eight of the surviving trees eerily twisted overnight in grief over the losses wrought by a great Mississippi River flood. An illegal duel to reclaim lost honor left the grounds of Natchez's Cherokee Plantation bloodstained, but the victim's spirit may still wander there today. A mutilated slave girl named Chloe still haunts the halls of the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville. Cheryl H. White and W. Ryan Smith reveal the dark history, folklore and lasting human cost of Louisiana plantation life.