Titoli in Stato e locale

For thirty-one years, the RMS Queen Mary sailed the North Atlantic. It helped defeat Hitler and was the ship of choice for the world's rich and famous. Now in retirement in the Port of Long Beach, the "Stateliest Ship Afloat" plays host to tourists, travelers—and more than six hundred spirits that roam her halls and passageways.

As English and German settlers migrated to Pennsylvania, they brought their beliefs in magic with them from the Old World—sometimes with dangerous consequences. In 1802, for example, an Allegheny County judge helped an accused witch escape an angry mob. But Susan Mummey was not so fortunate. In 1934, she was killed in her home by a young Schuylkill County man who was convinced that she had cursed him.

Long Island's history is filled with fascinating firsts, magnificent mansions, and captivating characters. From Glenn Curtiss, the first pilot to fly a plane on the island, to Earle Ovington, who carried the country's first airmail, the area has been known as the cradle of aviation. Millionaire William K. Vanderbilt's Long Island Motor Parkway, remnants of which still remain, was the nation's first highway. The desolate ruins of an exiled Albanian king's estate lie in the midst of the woods of the Muttontown Preserve.

In the 1930s, the Federal Writers' Project sent mostly anonymous writers into the depths of Florida to reveal its splendor to the world. The FWP and the State of Florida jointly published the results as Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, which included twenty-two driving tours of the state's main roads. Retracing the original routes in the Guide, Cathy Salustri rekindles our notions of paradise by bringing a modern eye to the historic travelogues.

In the nineteenth century, residents of Marblehead, Massachusetts, reported malicious pixies leading them in circles at dusk. In Aroostook County, Maine, elves called lutins exasperated farmers with their mischievous tricks and games. In Uncasville, Connecticut, beguiling creatures emerged for centuries at twilight to collect corn-filled baskets from members of the Mohegan Tribe. And in Harrisville, Rhode Island, a vision of fearful banshees augured death to an Irish seer.

Anyone who has waited in a Christmas line for the Walnut Room's Great Tree can attest that Chicago's loyalty to Marshall Field's is fierce. Dayton-Hudson even had to take out advertising around town to apologize for changing the Field's hallowed green bags. And with good reason—the store and those who ran it shaped the city's streets, subsidized its culture, and heralded its progress. The resulting commercial empire dictated wholesale trade terms in Calcutta and sponsored towns in North Carolina, but its essence was always Chicago.

May Hanna gave her millionaire ex-husband's hired Pinkerton detectives the slip to sneak out of the country. To escape financial embarrassment, James Potter, the manager of a prominent Euclid Avenue apartment building, gave his family cough medicine laced with poison, killing his entire family including himself. Married to a Millionaires' Row doctor, the infamous con woman Cassie Chadwick posed as Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter and forged a fake $5 million check.

On a cold day in early January 1864, Robert E. Lee wrote to Confederate president Jefferson Davis "The time is at hand when, if an attempt can be made to capture the enemy's forces at New Berne, it should be done." Over the next few months, Lee's dispatch would precipitate a momentous series of events as the Confederates, threatened by a supply crisis and an emerging peace movement, sought to seize Federal bases in eastern North Carolina.

Hidden in the dense brush and around oxbow lakes of the Rio Grande Valley wait sinister secrets, unnerving vestiges of the past, and wraiths of those claimed by the winding river. The spirit of a murdered student in Brownsville paces the locker room where she met her end. Tortured souls of patients lost in the Harlingen Insane Asylum refuse to be forgotten. Guests at the LaBorde Hotel in Rio Grande City report visions of the Red Lady, who was spurned by the soldier she loved and driven to suicide.

Seattle harbors a dark and violent history that stretches back to a bloody battle between natives and settlers in 1856. In the early 1900s, Dr. Linda Hazzard stole money from countless patients after starving them to death in her infamous sanitarium. Three robbers opened fire in the notorious Wah Mee gambling club in 1983, killing thirteen people in the state's deadliest mass homicide. Some of America's most notorious serial killers wrought terror in Seattle, including the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway.

The middle Texas coast, known locally as the Coast Bend, is an area filled with fascinating stories. From as early as the days of de Vaca and La Salle, the Coastal Bend has been a site of early exploration, bloody conflicts, legendary shipwrecks, and even a buried treasure or two. However, much of the true history has remained unknown, misunderstood, and even hidden. For years, local historian C. Herndon Williams has shared his fascinating discoveries of the area's early stories through his weekly column, "Coastal Bend Chronicle."

The capture of notorious mobster James "Whitey" Bulger closed an infamous chapter in Boston history, yet the city's criminal underworld has a long and bloody rap sheet that stretches back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Ford and Schorow reveal the underbelly of Boston through profiles of ruthless gangsters like Charles "King" Solomon, the Angiulo brothers, Joseph "The Animal" Barboza, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, and many more who carried out deadly hits and lucrative heists.

Drawing from the author's time as a reporter for the Everglades City Echo, this book will chronicle lesser-known stories about the area. The book discusses the original pioneer families of Everglades City, and the time when this city was the governing center of Collier County. It goes on to chronicle colorful characters from the area, local landmarks, and the annual Seafood Festival that draws 20,000 people to the city every year.

In the fall of 1916, New York housemaid Augusta Steinbach fell in love with a man she met through a matrimonial advertisement in her local newspaper. She traveled to Detroit to marry her correspondent, but in March 1917, she mysteriously disappeared. What began as a routine search for a missing person turned into a baffling case of deception, bigamy and murder. Follow detectives as they unravel the tangled web spun by Michigan's original lonely hearts killer—a criminal mastermind the Detroit News dubbed "one of America's master outlaws."

The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth's story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth's life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth's moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her listeners come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.

A Pagan Polemic curates the evolving perspective of Jack Loeffler—itinerant wanderer, environmental warrior, storyteller, and story collector—whose true education began when he was marched into the Nevada desert one day at dawn to play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" during an atomic bomb test a scant few miles away. Since that day in 1957, Jack's mission in life has been to record peoples of the borderlands and to bring "indigenous mindedness" to the forefront of the conversation about our precarious environments and our decaying planet.

Explore and experience all of the East Coast's many lighthouses with the newly updated and expanded edition of The Original Lighthouse Field Guide. Enthusiasts will enjoy the details and facts of each lighthouse as they embark on one of the most scenic summer road trips in America, the New...

Author Foxx Nolte gives listeners a glimpse behind the curtain of the most magical place on earth. Millions of people a year visit Walt Disney World, but few would consider it to be a place with any real history. But hidden just below the surface, past the blanket of pixie dust, is a story as vivid and bizarre as any. It is a history of corporate politics, urban planning, crazy ambitions, and failed schemes. The Hidden History of Walt Disney World takes you on a journey that stretches from "Old Florida" to the events that made Walt Disney World what it is today.

One of the oldest cities in Texas, Galveston has witnessed more than its share of tragedies. Devastating hurricanes, yellow fever epidemics, fires, a major Civil War battle, and more cast a dark shroud on the city's legacy. Ghostly tales creep throughout the history of famous tourist attractions and historical homes.

In this final volume of the beloved American saga that began with All Over but the Shoutin’ and continued with Ava’s Man, Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson. He learns...