At the time of Warrington Township�s founding in 1734, few landowners lived on Bucks County�s fertile soil. The history of the township is one of gradual growth and development. From unbroken wilderness grew small clusters of families forming villages. Warrington consisted of four villages: Warrington, Neshaminy, Pleasantville, and Tradesville. In the mid-1800s, the township�s landscape was made up of family farms, with agriculture as the main industry. In the late 1920s, the first small h...

**A spellbinding account of the real facts of the Central Park jogger case that powerfully reexamines one of New York City's most notorious crimes and its aftermath. •A must-read after watching Ava DuVernay's When They See UsOn April 20th, 1989, two passersby discovered the body of the "Central Park jogger" crumpled in a ravine. She'd been raped and severely beaten. Within days five black and Latino teenagers were apprehended, all five confessing to the c...

In 1995, after receiving a tip from an informant that a new drug called Ecstasy was being pushed in Manhattan’s nightclubs, DEA agent Robert Gagne embarked on a mission to unravel one of the world’s most lucrative drug-trafficking networks. Chemical Cowboys tracks Gagne as he infiltrates New York’s club scene, uncovering a multimillion-dollar criminal empire that spans continents. At its helm is Oded “Fat Man” Tuito, an Israeli fugitive and elusive drug kingpin who combines Wall Street bus...

"The book recounts a brutal string of murders committed by John Lesko and Michael Travaglia, who face the death penalty." — TribLIVEDuring the winter of 1979, southwestern Pennsylvania was rocked by a series of sensational murders, sparking a thirty-year criminal justice saga. A week of brutal, seemingly random killings culminated in the provocation and fatal shooting of Patrolman Leonard Miller, an officer new to the town of Apollo's police force and only...

The first biography of Henry and Emily Folger, who acquired the largest and finest collection of Shakespeare in the world.In Collecting Shakespeare, Stephen H. Grant recounts the American success story of Henry and Emily Folger. Shortly after marrying in 1885, the Folgers started buying, cataloging, and storing all manner of items about Shakespeare and his era. Emily earned a master's degree in Shakespeare studies. The frugal couple worked passionately as ...

A firsthand account of the swift transformation of Williamsburg, from factory backwater to artists' district to trendy hub and high-rise colonyWilliamsburg, Brooklyn, is now so synonymous with hipster culture and the very idea of urban revitalization—so well-known from Chicago to Cambodia as the playground for the game of ironized status-seeking and lifestyle one-upmanship—that it's easy to forget how just a few years ago it was a very different neighborhoo...

There were over 75 raids and battles that took place in Maryland during the Civil War, including "Bloody Antietam"--the bloodiest day in American military history.As a border state between the North and South during the Civil War, Maryland's loyalties were strong for both sides. The first casualties of the war occurred during the Baltimore Riot of April 19, 1861, when members of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment were attacked by Confederate supporters while traversing through the city on thei...

Planting an Empire explores the social and economic history of the Chesapeake region, revealing a story of two similar but distinct colonies in early America.Linked by the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia and Maryland formed a prosperous and politically important region in British North America before the American Revolution. Yet these "sister" colonies—alike in climate and soil, emphasis on tobacco farming, and use of enslaved labor—eventually followed divergent social and econom...

The western New York state Great Lakes region serves as a scenic setting for supernatural traditions, incidences, and folklore.Avenging specters, demon-tortured roads, holy miracles, weird psychic events, prehistoric power sites, ancient curses, Native American shamans, active battlefields, ghost ships, black dogs, haunted monuments, and the phantoms of Rochester's famous—all are part of the legacy of Rochester and the lower Genesee. Supernatural historian Mason Wi...

During the 1972–1973 basketball season, the Philadelphia 76ers were not just a bad team; they were fantastically awful. Doomed from the start after losing their leading scorer and rebounder, Billy Cunningham, as well as head coach Jack Ramsay, they lost twenty-one of their first twenty-three games. A Philadelphia newspaper began calling them the Seventy Sickers, and they duly lost their last thirteen games on their way to a not-yet-broken record of nine wins and seventy-three losses.

In the summer of 1978, residents of Love Canal, a suburban development in Niagara Falls, NY, began protesting against the leaking toxic waste dump in their midst-a sixteen-acre site containing 100,000 barrels of chemical waste that anchored their neighborhood. Initially seeking evacuation, area activists soon found that they were engaged in a far larger battle over the meaning of America's industrial past and its environmental future. The Love Canal protest movement inaugurated the era of ...

The largest town in Warren County, Phillipsburg is located in the southwestern tip of the county along the Delaware River. Although the origin of its name is uncertain-named after a Native American chief or an early landowner-the area was known as Phillipsburg as early as 1749 and was officially incorporated in 1861. Situated relatively close to New York and Philadelphia, Phillipsburg developed as a manufacturing hub. Companies such as J.R. Templin's Iron and Brass Foundry, Cooper Iron Wor...