Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in State & Local

Since 1980, the number of people in US prisons has increased more than 450 percent. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world". Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces conjoined to produce the prison boom.

Published in 2008, Massacre at Mountain Meadows was a bombshell of a book, revealing the story of one of the grimmest episodes in Latter-day Saint history, when settlers in southwestern Utah slaughtered more than 100 members of a California-bound wagon train in 1857. In this much-anticipated sequel, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown examine the aftermath of this atrocity. Vengeance Is Mine documents southern Utah leaders’ attempts to cover up their crime by silencing witnesses and spreading lies.

It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals - too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows.

William Pepper was James Earl Ray's lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and even after Ray's conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray's innocence. This myth-shattering expose is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper's original best-selling and critically-acclaimed book of the same name, with 26 years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy.

Martin Luther King Jr., was a powerful and eloquent champion of the poor and oppressed in the US, and at the height of his fame in the mid-'60s seemed to offer the real possibility of a new and radical beginning for liberal politics in the USA. However, in 1968, he was assassinated; the movement for social and economic change has never recovered. The conviction of James Earl Ray for his murder has never looked even remotely safe, and when William Pepper began to investigate the case it was the start of a 25-year campaign for justice.

With 30 years of backcountry patrol experience in Florida, Bob Lee has lived through incidents of legend, including one of the biggest environmental busts in Florida history. His fascinating memoir reveals the danger and the humor in the unsung exploits of game wardens.

The Tangled Web tells the dramatic story of detective Richard Cain's criminal career as revealed by his half-brother, Michael. Cain led a double-life—one as a well-known cop who led raids that landed on the front pages, and the other as a "made man" in one of Chicago's most notorious mob families.

New York Times best-selling author and former federal prosecutor Lis Wiehl uses new research and first-hand interviews to tell the heart-pounding story of Charles Manson’s horrific crimes, the painstaking investigation that followed, and the inspired prosecution that put him away.

As a young man, Ringo became embroiled in the blood feud turbulence of post-Reconstruction Texas. The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War in Texas began as a war over range rights, but it swiftly deteriorated into blood vengeance and spiraled out of control as the body count rose. In this charnel house, Ringo gained a reputation as a dangerous gunfighter and man killer. The reputation he earned in Texas, further inflated by his willingness to shoot it out with Victorio's raiders during a deadly confrontation in New Mexico, preceded him to Tombstone in territorial Arizona.

Situated in a barren desert landscape, Las Vegas exists for one reason—water. Popular as a waystation for travelers, the Las Vegas Valley attracted the attention of railroad visionaries at the end of the 19th century. After purchasing land from a local widow, the developers laid out a town in 1905. Vegas hasn’t slowed down since.

Born around 1824 in New Jersey, John Johnston headed west after deserting from the US Navy and became a well-known and infamous mountain man. His many lives would involve him working as a miner, hunter, trapper, bootlegger, woodcutter, and army scout. When his Flathead Indian wife and child were killed by Crow Indians while he was away hunting and trapping, he swore to avenge their deaths, becoming known as “Crow Killer” and “Liver-Eating Johnson” (without the “t”), names he earned by cutting out and eating the livers of his enemies.

Crapalachia is a portrait of these formative years, coming-of-age in rural West Virginia. Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves oral folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana.

Bound Away offers a new understanding of the westward movement. After the Turner thesis which celebrated the frontier as the source of American freedom and democracy, and the iconoclasm of the new western historians who dismissed the idea of the frontier as merely a mask for conquest and exploitation, David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly take a third approach to the subject.

The SS Portland was a solid and luxurious ship, and its loss in 1898 in a violent storm with some 200 people aboard was later remembered as “New England’s Titanic.” The Portland was one of New England's largest and most luxurious paddle steamers, and after nine years' solid performance, she had earned a reputation as a safe and dependable vessel. In November 1898, a perfect storm formed off the New England coast. Conditions would produce a blizzard with 100 miles per hour winds and 60-foot waves that pummeled the coast.

Gone to Texas engagingly tells the story of the Lone Star State, from the arrival of humans in the Panhandle more than 10,000 years ago to the opening of the 21st Century. Focusing on the state's successive waves of immigrants, the audiobook offers an inclusive view of the vast array of Texans who, often in conflict with each other and always in a struggle with the land, created a history and an idea of Texas.

When Chris Bryson was discovered nude and severely beaten stumbling down Charlotte Street in Kansas City in 1988, police had no idea they were about to discover the den of one of the most sadistic American serial killers in recent history. This is the true story of Robert Berdella, nicknamed by the media the Kansas City Butcher, who from between 1984 and 1988 brutally raped, tortured, and ultimately dismembered six young male prostitutes in his unassuming home on a quiet street in Kansas City.

How to Find Zodiac includes an exclusive interview between author Jarett Kobek, true crime aficionado Rebecca Lavoie, and host of True Crime Obsessed, Patrick Hinds. This title encourages you to forget everything you think you know about the infamous killer as it reinvestigates what's possible within the case and poses a new suggestion of who's to blame.

Before Mary Kay, Martha Stewart, and Joy Mangano, there was Brownie Wise, the charismatic Tupperware executive who converted postwar optimism into a record-breaking sales engine powered by American housewives. In Life of the Party, Bob Kealing offers the definitive portrait of Wise, a plucky businesswoman who divorced her alcoholic husband, started her own successful business, and eventually caught the eye of Tupperware inventor Earl Tupper, whose plastic containers were collecting dust on store shelves.

The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846, 87 people, men, women, and children, set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering.

In this utterly immersive volume, Mike Wallace captures the swings of prosperity and downturn, from the 1898 skyscraper-driven boom to the Bankers' Panic of 1907, the labor upheaval, and violent repression during and after the First World War. Here is New York on a whole new scale, moving from national to global prominence - an urban dynamo driven by restless ambition, boundless energy, immigrant dreams, and Wall Street greed.