Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes,

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"An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America"--

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan's National Book Award - winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding...

"Drawing from conversations with family members, friends, neighbors, and household and security staff, this multigenerational story of the Kennedy family as seen through their Hyannis Port compound on Cape Cod provides a sweeping history of an American dynasty that has left an indelible mark on the nation's politics and culture."

World War II changed the face of Evansville, Indiana. In December 1941, the city was still recovering from the Great Depression, yet within three months, a series of blockbuster
announcements transformed the region. Several corporations received major defense contracts to manufacture parts and ammunitions, while two new installations were launched: a shipyard to construct Landing Ship Tanks and a factory to manufacture P�47 airplanes. Industrial...

"The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City and Wild Bill. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, nine men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers...

Author Keven McQueen recalls a time when skunk farms, which allegedly produced a cure for rheumatism, were speckled throughout the countryside and a miserable woman tied her husband to a fence post, coated him with salt and intended to let the cows "lick him to death."? Meet the King of the Ghouls, an accomplished grave robber and notorious murderer, and a man so convinced he was an ox that he often joined neighborhood cattle for a bite of grass,...

The people of Indiana have always accommodated change, exchanging log cabins and spinning wheels for railroads, cities, and factories in the 19th century; automobiles, suburbs, and foreign investment in the 20th. The present has brought new issues and challenges, as Indiana's citizens respond to a rapidly changing world. Madison offers an invigorating view of one of America's distinctive states and the long and fascinating journey of its people.

"At first, Erika Bolstad knew only one thing about her great-grandmother, Anna: she was a homesteader on the North Dakota prairies in the early 1900s before her husband committed her to an asylum under mysterious circumstances. As Erika's mother was dying, she revealed more. Their family still owned the mineral rights to Anna's landand oil companies were interested in the black gold beneath the prairies. Their family, Erika learned, could get rich...

This is the land of Hoosiers. Of George Rogers Clark's conquest at Vincennes, a key victory for the Revolution. Of covered bridges. A fledgling automobile industry. Notre Dame. The National Road and the Lincoln Highway and Carl Fisher. Cole Porter. The Milwaukee Steamer and the Rumely Oil Pull Tractor. Riverboats on the Wabash and the Ohio. The Wabash and Erie Canal. Interurbans. James Whitcomb Riley and George Ade. Small towns and big cities. Street...