History:

Amoskeag

Written by Tamara K. Hareven

Format: eBook, 416 pages
On Sale: May 15, 2013
Price: $12.99

Through the prism of one turn-of-the-century factory-city, Tamara Hareven and Randolph Langenbach have captured the historic experience of millions of Americans. We hear for the first time the eloquent voices—sometimes elegiac, sometimes bitter, yet always powerful—of immigrant being turned into Americans as they worked the machines which were themselves transforming this... Read more >

Worlds Of Wonder, Days Of Judgment
Popular Religious Belief in Early New England
Written by David D. Hall

Format: eBook, 320 pages
On Sale: May 1, 2013
Price: $24.99

This book tells an extraordinary story of the people of early New England and their spiritual lives. It is about ordinary people--farmers, housewives, artisans, merchants, sailors, aspiring scholars--struggling to make sense of their time and place on earth. David Hall describes a world of religious consensus and resistance: a variety of... Read more >

Joshua L. Chamberlain
The Life in Letters of a Great Leader of the American Civil War
Written by Thomas Desjardin and The National Civil War Museum

Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
On Sale: May 22, 2012
Price: $25.95

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain has been a central character in two feature films (Gettysburg and Gods & Generals), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (The Killer Angels), and an inspiration for Ken Burns's production of the highly acclaimed PBS series The Civil War. Chamberlain won national fame at the Battle of Gettysburg for his... Read more >

Banned in Boston
The Watch and Ward Society's Crusade against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil
Written by Neil Miller

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
On Sale: September 20, 2011
Price: $16.00

A lively history of the Watch and Ward Society--New England's notorious literary censor for over eighty years.

Banned in Boston is the first-ever history of the Watch and Ward Society--once Boston's unofficial moral guardian. An influential watchdog organization, bankrolled by society's upper crust, it actively suppressed vices like gambling and prostitution, and...

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A City So Grand
The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900
Written by Stephen Puleo

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
On Sale: May 17, 2011
Price: $16.00

Between 1850 and 1900, Boston underwent a stunning metamorphosis from an insulated New England town into one of the world’s great metropolises—one that achieved worldwide prominence in politics, medicine, education, science, social activism, literature, commerce, and transportation.
 
In A City So Grand, Stephen Puleo chronicles this remarkable period in Boston’s... Read more >

Dark Tide
The Great Molasses Flood of 1919
Written by Stephen Puleo

Format: eBook
On Sale: November 10, 2010
Price: $16.00

Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his... Read more >

Banned in Boston
The Watch and Ward Society?s Crusade against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil
Written by Neil Miller

Format: eBook, 272 pages
On Sale: October 13, 2010
Price: $26.95

“I want to be intelligent, even if I do live in Boston.”
—an anonymous Bostonian, 1929
 
In this spectacular romp through the Puritan City, Neil Miller relates the scintillating story of how a powerful band of Brahmin moral crusaders helped make Boston the most straitlaced city in America, forever linked with the infamous...

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Banned in Boston

Written by Neil Miller

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
On Sale: September 21, 2010
Price: $26.95

“I want to be intelligent, even if I do live in Boston.”
—an anonymous Bostonian, 1929
 
In this spectacular romp through the Puritan City, Neil Miller relates the scintillating story of how a powerful band of Brahmin moral crusaders helped make Boston the most straitlaced city in America, forever linked with the infamous...

Read more >

All Souls
A Family Story from Southie
Written by Michael Patrick MacDonald

Format: eBook
On Sale: July 28, 2010
Price: $14.95

A breakaway bestseller since its first printing, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald's Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger's crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald's Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters like his Ma, a miniskirted, accordion-playing... Read more >

The Good City
Writers Explore 21st-century Boston
Edited by Emily Hiestand and Ande Zellman

Format: eBook
On Sale: July 1, 2010
Price: $13.00

Boston has persevered through the bad old days to thrive, and more, to make a kind of statement about the good city. The good city is innovative and fun, it is prosperous, it strives for justice and sustainability, but above all, it is alive. -From the Introduction by Paul Grogan

The Good... Read more >

A City So Grand
The Rise of an American Metropolis: Boston 1850-1900
Written by Stephen Puleo

Format: eBook
On Sale: May 4, 2010
Price: $26.95

Once upon a time, "Boston Town" was an insulated New England township. But the community was destined for greatness. Between 1850 and 1900, Boston underwent a stunning metamorphosis to emerge as one of the world's great metropolises-one that achieved national and international prominence in politics, medicine, education, science, social activism, literature... Read more >

A City So Grand
The Rise of an American Metropolis: Boston 1850-1900
Written by Stephen Puleo

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
On Sale: May 1, 2010
Price: $26.95

Once upon a time, "Boston Town" was an insulated New England township. But the community was destined for greatness. Between 1850 and 1900, Boston underwent a stunning metamorphosis to emerge as one of the world's great metropolises-one that achieved national and international prominence in politics, medicine, education, science, social activism, literature... Read more >

The Paradise of All These Parts
A Natural History of Boston
Written by John Mitchell

Format: eBook
On Sale: June 1, 2009
Price: $14.95

In 1614, explorer John Smith sailed into what was to become Boston Harbor and referred to the wild lands and waters around him as "the Paradise of all these parts." Within fifteen years, the Puritans were developing the tadpoleshaped Shawmut Peninsula, as members of the Massachusett tribe fled. Now, nearly four... Read more >

The Paradise of All These Parts
A Natural History of Boston
Written by John Mitchell

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
On Sale: June 1, 2009
Price: $16.00

How much does the current landscape of Boston, Massachusetts, resemble the place that Captain John Smith referred to in 1614 as "the Paradise of all these parts"? John Hanson Mitchell explores a variety of habitats as he ranges outward from the core of the peninsula where the Puritans first settled to... Read more >

Inheriting the Trade
A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History
Written by Thomas Norman DeWolf

Format: Trade Paperback, 280 pages
On Sale: January 1, 2009
Price: $17.00

In 2001, Thomas DeWolf discovered that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in U.S. history, responsible for transporting at least ten thousand Africans. This is his memoir of the journey in which ten family members retraced their ancestors' steps through the notorious triangle trade route—from New England to... Read more >

The Last Fish Tale
The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town
Written by Mark Kurlansky

Format: eBook, 304 pages
On Sale: June 3, 2008
Price: $14.99

The bestselling author of Cod, Salt, and The Big Oyster has enthralled readers with his incisive blend of culinary, cultural, and social history. Now, in his most colorful, personal, and important book to date, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a disappearing way of life: fishing–how it has thrived in and... Read more >

The Boston Italians
A Story of Pride, Perseverance, and Paesani, from the Years of the Great Immigration to the Present Day
Written by Steve Puleo

Format: Trade Paperback, 344 pages
On Sale: May 1, 2008
Price: $17.00

In this lively and engaging history, Stephen Puleo tells the story of the Boston Italians from their earliest years, when a largely illiterate and impoverished people in a strange land recreated the bonds of village and region in the cramped quarters of the North End. Focusing on this first and crucial... Read more >

Inheriting the Trade
A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading
Written by Thomas Norman DeWolf

Format: eBook
On Sale: January 15, 2008
Price: $17.00

In 2001, Thomas DeWolf discovered that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in U.S. history, responsible for transporting at least ten thousand Africans. This is his memoir of the journey in which ten family members retraced their ancestors' steps through the notorious triangle trade route—from New England to... Read more >

All Souls
A Family Story from Southie
Written by Michael Patrick MacDonald

Format: Trade Paperback, 296 pages
On Sale: November 1, 2007
Price: $14.95

A breakaway bestseller since its first printing, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald's Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger's crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald's Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters like his Ma, a... Read more >

The Boston Italians
A Story of Pride, Perseverance, and Paesani, from the Years of the Great Immigration to the Present Day
Written by Steve Puleo

Format: eBook
On Sale: April 1, 2007
Price: $17.00

In this lively and engaging history, Stephen Puleo tells the story of the Boston Italians from their earliest years, when a largely illiterate and impoverished people in a strange land recreated the bonds of village and region in the cramped quarters of the North End. Focusing on this first and crucial... Read more >

Daughter of Boston
The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-century Woman, Caroline Healey Dall
Edited by Helen Deese

Format: Trade Paperback, 488 pages
On Sale: September 15, 2006
Price: $20.00

In nineteenth-century Boston, amidst the popular lecturing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the discussion groups led by Margaret Fuller, sat a remarkable young woman, Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912): transcendentalist, early feminist, writer, reformer, and, perhaps most importantly, active diarist. During the seventy-five years that Dall kept a diary, she captured all... Read more >

Sarah's Long Walk
The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America
Written by Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick

Format: Trade Paperback, 328 pages
On Sale: February 1, 2006
Price: $26.00

In 1847, a five-year-old African American girl named Sarah Roberts was forced to walk past five white schools to attend the poor and densely crowded all-black Abiel Smith School on Boston's Beacon Hill. Incensed that his daughter had been turned away at each white school, her father, Benjamin, sued the city... Read more >

Daughter of Boston
The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-century Woman, Caroline Healey Dall
Edited by Helen Deese

Format: eBook
On Sale: October 12, 2005
Price: $20.00

This Journal is my safety valve-and it is well, that I can thus rid myself of my superfluous steam . . . I trust posterity will remember this, should it ever be gratified by a glimpse at these pages.

In the nineteenth century, Boston was well known as a center for intellectual... Read more >

Idyll Banter
Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town
Written by Chris Bohjalian

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
On Sale: May 24, 2005
Price: $13.99

Years ago, Chris Bohjalian and his wife traded their Brooklyn co-op for a century-old Victorian house in Lincoln, Vermont (population 975). Bohjalian, a bestselling novelist, began chronicling life in that gloriously quirky little village with a wide variety of magazine essays and his newspaper column, “Idyll Banter.” These pieces, written over... Read more >

A City in Terror
Calvin Coolidge and the 1919 Boston Police Strike
Written by Rosalind Russell

Format: Trade Paperback, 264 pages
On Sale: May 15, 2005
Price: $21.00

On September 9, 1919, an American nightmare came true. The entire Boston police force deserted their posts, leaving the city virtually defenseless. Women were raped on street corners, stores were looted, and pedestrians were beaten and robbed while crowds not only looked on but cheered.

The police strike and the mayhem... Read more >