The Hidden History Of Massachusetts

Boston is one of America's most historic cities, but it has quite a bit of unseen past. Riotous mobs celebrated their hatred of the pope in an annual celebration called Pope's Night during the colonial era. A centuries-long turf war played out on the streets of quiet Chinatown, ending in the massacre of five men in a back alley in 1991. William Monroe Trotter published the Boston Guardian, an independent African American newspaper, and was a beacon of civil rights activism at the turn of the century. Author and historian Dina Vargo shines a light into the cobwebbed corners of Boston's hidden history.

A deconstruction of the modern history book as artifact, How to Read a History Book explains who writes history books, how the writers are trained, and why they write them. It also discusses genre, bias (political and otherwise) and how to read history books between the lines. Written for undergraduates, intro graduate students and anyone with an informed interest in the subject, How to Read a History Book demonstrates that, rather than being objects that fall from the sky, history books are actually socially-constructed artifacts reflecting all the contradictions of modern meritocratic capitalism.

Discover 400 years of New England history you won’t find in guidebooks in this collection of true stories and colorful characters from The Pine Tree State. Maine wouldn’t be the magical place it is today without the contributions of little-known individuals whose inspiring and adventuresome lives make up the story of Maine's "hidden history." Journalist and Maine historian Harry Gratwick presents vividly 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 ever win a Major League Baseball batting championship, Hidden History of Maine reveals the men and women who made history without making it into history books.

Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award Winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for History A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A Saveur “Essential Food Books That Define New York City” Selection In the final years of the nineteenth century, small groups of Muslim peddlers arrived at Ellis Island every summer, bags heavy with embroidered silks from their home villages in Bengal. The American demand for “Oriental goods” took these migrants on a curious path, from New Jersey’s beach boardwalks into the heart of the segregated South. Two decades later, hundreds of Indian Muslim seamen began jumping ship in New York and Baltimore, escaping the engine rooms of British steamers to find less brutal work onshore. As factory owners sought their labor and anti-Asian immigration laws closed in around them, these men built clandestine networks that stretched from the northeastern waterfront across the industrial Midwest. The stories of these early working-class migrants vividly contrast with our typical understanding of immigration. Vivek Bald’s meticulous reconstruction reveals a lost history of South Asian sojourning and life-making in the United States. At a time when Asian immigrants were vilified and criminalized, Bengali Muslims quietly became part of some of America’s most iconic neighborhoods of color, from Tremé in New Orleans to Detroit’s Black Bottom, from West Baltimore to Harlem. Many started families with Creole, Puerto Rican, and African American women. As steel and auto workers in the Midwest, as traders in the South, and as halal hot dog vendors on 125th Street, these immigrants created lives as remarkable as they are unknown. Their stories of ingenuity and intermixture challenge assumptions about assimilation and reveal cross-racial affinities beneath the surface of early twentieth-century America.

As Maynard grew from a scattering of small hill farms to a booming center of industry and immigration, much of its colorful history was nearly forgotten. With a rollicking collection of his essays, newspaper columnist David A. Mark uncovers the hidden gems of the town's history. Learn why Babe Ruth shopped in Maynard during his Red Sox days and what they fed the animals at the Taylor mink ranch. Find out who is buried--and who is not--in the Maynard family crypt and which rock 'n' roll bands recorded in the studio upstairs from Woolworths on Main Street. Almost lost to time, these remarkable moments in history helped shape Maynard into the vibrant community that it is today.

Celebrated local historian Thomas Dresser unearths the little-known stories that laid the foundations for the community of Martha's Vineyard. Behind the mansions and presidential vacations of Martha's Vineyard hide the lost stories and forgotten events of small-town America. What was the island's role in the Underground Railroad? Why do chickens festoon Nancy Luce's grave? And how did the people of the Vineyard react in 1923 when the rum running ship John Dwight sank with the island's supply of liquor aboard? Delve deep below the surface of history to discover the origin and meaning of local place names and the significance of beloved landmarks.

Bordered by the Hudson River and the Berkshire Mountains, Columbia County is part of the famously picturesque Hudson Valley region. But look beyond the rolling hills to discover the secrets of Columbia County. A mastodon tooth rolled down a farmer's hill in Claverack, changing the world's understanding of prehistoric times. President Martin Van Buren lost his wife, Hannah, in Kinderhook and hardly mentioned her again. Hudson's gallows were the scene of New York's last hanging, as hundreds of ticketholders looked on. Outcasts called "Pondshiners" hid in the hills of Taghkanic, and the only sign of their existence are the fantastic baskets they made. Join local author Allison Guertin Marchese as she explores these little-known stories of people and places, deeply woven into the history of Columbia County, New York.