Local History

Dear Traveler, Welcome to the WanderStories™ History of Istanbul as told by the best local guide. The city that we now know as Istanbul has been known by many different names throughout its long history. It was founded in 667 B.C.E. as Byzantium. Then, in 330, the Roman Emperor Constantine I christened it as New Rome. Later, it would come to bear his own name and be known as Constantinople, which was then rendered into Arabic languages as Kostantiniyye, which the Ottomans also adopted. The city was destined to finally be known in our modern age as Istanbul, derived from a Greek phrase ...

Acclaimed Southern author Dennis Covington was a National Book Award finalist. Redneck Riviera is the true story of Covington’s bizarre encounters with a lawless band of gun-toting swamp-dwellers in Central Florida who’ve illegally claimed the two-and-a-half acres of land he inherited from his father.

This new history of Hull traces the story of the city from its beginnings as a haven for the transportation of goods to one of the main medieval harbours of England. The town was a key player in the Civil War of the seventeenth century and grew to become one of the country's major cities and ports following rapid expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Alan Avery was educated in Hull and at King's College, London. He has written widely on the history of Yorkshire and is the author of 'The Story of Bradford ' and 'The Story of York' in this series.

Pickering has a long, continuous history, reaching back to prehistoric times. This new book traces the story of the town down the ages from prehistoric times to Saxon village, the coming of the Normans and the building of the castle to modern times when the town's economy changed from serving farming to light industry and tourism. This full colour book will delight tourists and young people and anyone wanting a brief but authoritative history of Pickering.

When King George VI visited York in 1923 he procalimed that, 'The history of York is the history of England'. This book outlines the continuity of the city's 2000 years of history from Roman to modern times and shows how with public planning and private initiative a city can reform and rejuvenate itself to the benefit of resident and visitor. Alan Avery was educated in Hull and at King's College London. He has written widely on the history of Yorkshire and is the author of other books in the series including 'The Story of Hull' and 'The Story of Bradford'.

Educated in Amherst, Massachusetts, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (1819-1906) accompanied her physician-husband to California in 1849. The Shirley Letters (1922) is the book edition of a series of letters written by Mrs. Clappe to her sister in 1851 and 1852. They were first published under the pseudonym of Dame Shirley in the Pioneer magazine, 1854-55. In these letters, Louise Clappe writes of life in San Francisco and the Feather River mining communities of Rich Bar and Indian Bar.

This engaging history pulls listeners back to a chaotic time along the lower Rio Grande in the mid-19th century. Texas Devils challenges the time-honored image of "good guys in white hats" to reveal the more complicated and sobering reality behind the Ranger Myth. Michael L. Collins demonstrates that, rather than bringing peace to the region, the Texas Rangers contributed to the violence and were often brutal in their injustices against Spanish-speaking inhabitants.

What began as the obscure local case of two Italian immigrant anarchists accused of robbery and murder flared into an unprecedented political and legal scandal as the perception grew that their conviction was a judicial travesty and their execution a political murder. This book is the first to reveal the full national and international scope of the Sacco-Vanzetti affair, uncovering how and why the two men became the center of a global cause célèbre that shook public opinion and transformed America’s relationship with the world.

Indians! Pirates! Rebels! Blockade runners! Smugglers! Murder! Beaches! Beauty contests! Hurricanes! These are all parts of the colorful history of an island city that once called itself The Free State of Galveston. Located at a natural harbor on the northeastern part of a 30-mile-long sand barrier island, the city dates its beginning to the end of the Texas Revolution.

On July 16, 1945, just weeks before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought about the surrender of Japan and the end of WWII, the US unleashed the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity testing site located in the remote Tularosa Valley in New Mexico. In The First Atomic Bomb Janet Farrell Brodie explores the history of the Trinity test and those whose contributions have rarely been discussed—the men and women who constructed, served, and witnessed the first test—as well as the downwinders who suffered the consequences of radiation.

Sins of the Shovel is a story of adventure and business gone wrong and how archaeologists today grapple with this complex heritage. Through the story of the Hyde Exploring Expedition, practicing archaeologist Rachel Morgan uncovers the uncomfortable links between commodity culture, contemporary ethics, and the broader political forces that perpetuate destructive behavior today. The result is an unsparing and even-handed assessment of American archaeology's sins, past and present, and how the field is working toward atonement.

On 14 May 1804, one Captain Meriwether Lewis and his companion William Clark led a 33-man expedition to the new lands of Louisiana. 8,000 miles and two years later, after rafting up the Missouri and crossing the Rocky Mountains, they reached the far side of the world, the Pacific Ocean.

The Spanish word cimarron, meaning "wild" or "untamed," refers to a region in the southern Rocky Mountains where control of timber, gold, coal, and grazing lands long bred violent struggle. After the United States occupation following the 1846-1848 war with Mexico, this tract of nearly two million acres came to be known as the Maxwell Land Grant. When Cimarron Meant Wild presents a new history of the collision that occurred over the region's resources between 1870 and 1900.

From Publishers Weekly In his third installment (after A Short History of a Small Place and Off for the Sweet Hereafter of hilarious adventures narrated by young Louis Benfield of Neely, N.C., Pearson again spins a rollicking yarn with somber undertones and reveals himself to be a shrewd social commentator. Essentially the chronicle of the pursuit of a stolen Chevrolet that ends with the murder of a black man, the kernel of the story is embroidered on, digressed from, told and retold with deepening significance each time. Everything that goes on in the real worldincluding the sordid and the...

Justin Pitre was born and raised on his grandfather's Louisiana bayou, and he has made a promise to keep his family's prized 500-acre property safe. But across town, Big-Tex oil bigwig Tom Huff and his company have major plans to cash in on the resources that lie below the bayou.

In The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory, James N. Leiker and Ramon Powers explore how the event has been remembered, told, and retold. They examine the recollections of Indians and settlers and their descendants, and they consider local history, mass-media treatments, and literature to draw thought-provoking conclusions about how this story has changed over time.

This book is about the resort at Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee from 1900 to 1945. Also, there are articles about its many famous visitors including a Speaker of the US House, and a jazz legend. It also explores the search for mythical gold and silver mines there and an archeologist’s efforts to prove that Neanderthal man inhabited nearby caves. There are many other items mentioned as well.

Miami was never a town, not even a village; it sprang to life out of the tropical wilderness, as a fully formed magical city. London, Paris, and Rome are just three of the world’s cities that are crammed full of history; events, personalities, stories that never fail to fascinate and entertain. But they have had two-thousand years to evolve those stories. Miami is barely one-hundred years old but is already as full of history as any place else on the planet.

Lincoln's Citadel is a fresh, absorbing narrative history of Lincoln’s leadership in Civil War Washington. Here is the vivid story of how the Lincoln administration met the immense challenges the war posed to the city, transforming a vulnerable capital into a bastion for the Union.

In this powerful, passionate chronicle, Noah Adams, the beloved host of NPR's All Things Considered, takes us on a river journey through the heart of Appalachia - a journey shared by pioneers and preachers, white-water daredevils, bluegrass musicians, and an unforgettable cast of vivid historical characters.