Martin W. Sandler

Though barely known today, these are major historical stories, from Ziryab, an eighth-century black slave whose influence on music, cuisine, fashion, and manners still reverberates, to Cahokia, a twelfth-century city north of the Rio Grande, which at its zenith contained a population estimated to have been as high as 40,000 (more than any contemporary European city), to the worst peacetime maritime disaster ever, the explosion and sinking of the Sultana...

Acclaimed historian Martin Sandler-a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, winner of seven Emmy® Awards, and author of more than fifty books-finally brings to light an amazing high-seas adventure. Fascinating rare photographs, paintings, engravings, and maps illustrate the book throughout. It all began when, in one of the biggest news stories of the 19th century, Sir John Franklin and his ships the Erebus and the Terror disappeared while attempting to...

"Some of the most important issues of our time were no less important 100 years ago. America in 1919, at the close of World War I, was shaken from the events of large-scale warfare, fearing a Communist takeover, and facing an incredible amount of social and political change. From Prohibition to women's suffrage, the labor strikes to the violence of the Red Summer and the Red Scare, this book explores each major movement of 1919. Showing how these...

In 1869, Alfred Beach wanted to build America's first air-powered railway below New York City, but Boss Tweed, powerful politician and notorious crook, opposed. Working under night cover, Beach and his crew carved a three-hundred-foot tunnel beneath a department store. Before long, the project was discovered and the public raved about its potential. But no further tunnels were ever built. What happened to Beach's railway, and where is it now?