Colorful tales of the MS Gulf Coast from specters to sodas and from buccaneers and pioneers. The story of the Mississippi Golden Gulf Coast can't be told without a few tall tales--pirates, buried treasure, ghosts and colorful characters pepper its diverse past. From incredible stories of the pirate Jean Lafitte to iconic legends like Barq's Root Beer, travel from Bay St. Louis to Biloxi and every nook and cranny in between to discover the legends and lore of Mississippi's Golden Gulf Coast. Local historian Edmond Boudreaux explores this exciting history, recounting the fantastic tales that launch the reader into the past and create a truly captivating history.

When William McKinley traveled to Mississippi in 1901, he became the first US president to visit the state while in office. Though twenty-four men served as president prior to McKinley, none of them included Mississippi in their travel plans. Presidents in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have a better record of visiting Mississippi. There were forty-five presidential trips to the state between 1901 and 2016. Thirty-three communities hosted one or more of the sixty-nine stops the presidents made during those visits. George W. Bush is the unrivaled champion when it comes to the number and frequency of presidential visits. During eight years in office, he visited Mississippi nineteen times, fourteen of those during the state's recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Campaigns and Hurricanes: A History of Presidential Visits to Mississippi traces the presidential visits from William McKinley to Barack Obama and sets each visit into its historical context. Readers will learn that of the forty-five visits made to Mississippi by sitting presidents, eighteen were for disaster recovery, eleven were to campaign, eight were in support of policy proposals, three were purely recreational, and five had singular purposes--for example, university commencement ceremonies or military inspections. Mixed in the history of these visits are anecdotes and discussions of issues, trends, politics, and the people shaping the moments that brought US presidents to Mississippi.

The battle for Vicksburg roils still, the outcome of the Union siege undecided as specters reload and carry on. The Pascagoula River sings out in grief, and a three-legged lady stalks a country lane outside Columbus. The Magnolia State is more than antebellum homes, fish camps and the blues. This is a land worthy of its matchless storytellers. Even after being passed back and forth between the Spanish, French and British, the ancient energy of the original inhabitants still reverberates through the region. From forgotten tales of African slaves, once the majority population, to yarns of bloodthirsty backwoodsmen on the Natchez Trace, author Alan Brown goes beyond the bullet points of Mississippi history. The legends often tell a clearer story than anything else.

A Mississippi historian chronicles the rise and fall of The Magnolia State’s moonshine empire in this revealing true crime history. For most states, the repeal of prohibition meant a return to legally drunken normalcy, but not so in Mississippi. The state had gone dry more than a decade before the rest of the nation. In that time, a lucrative black market for moonshine and bonded liquor became a way of life for many Mississippians. By the time Prohibition was lifted, bootleggers and state politicians were unwilling to give up their hold on the sale of alcohol. For nearly sixty years, Mississippi was known as the "wettest dry state in the country." Until statewide prohibition was finally repealed in 1966, illegal booze fueled a corrupt political machine that intimidated journalists who dared to speak against it and fixed juries that threatened its interests. Author and native Mississippian Janice Branch Tracy offers an intimate and authoritative look inside Mississippi Moonshine Politics.

Just off the coast of the Gulf Islands National Seashore lies Cat Island, an isolated, T-shaped sliver of sand with a remarkable past. A coveted hiding place for Jean Lafitte's pirate treasure in the late eighteenth century and illegal booze during Prohibition, Cat Island also witnessed the first shots of the Battle of New Orleans, an encampment for Seminoles during the Trail of Tears and the first lighthouses on the Mississippi coast. As a child, author John Cuevas learned that his family had owned and lived on the island for three generations beginning with his ancestor, Juan de Cuevas, referred to as "The King of Cat Island," who received it by way of a Spanish land grant. In this engaging work, Cuevas chronicles the historic events that occurred on the island's shores and offers a tribute to the legacy of one of the Gulf Coast's pioneer families.

Although most Americans believe that the Battle of Gettysburg was the only turning point of the Civil War, the war actually turned repeatedly. Turning Points of the American Civil War examines key shifts and the context surrounding them, demonstrating that the war was a continuum of watershed events.