Illicit commerce was key to the survival of the mid-Atlantic colonies from the Golden Age of piracy to the battles of the American Revolution. Out of this exciting time came beloved villains like Captain William Kidd and Black Sam Bellamy as well as inspiring locals like Captain Shelley and James Forten. Learn of the legend of Sadie the Goat and her Charlton Street Gang as piracy was ending in the region in the 19th century. From the shores of New York to the oceans of the East Indies, from Delaware Bay to the islands of the West Indies, author Jamie L.H. Goodall illuminates the height of piratical depredations in the mid-Atlantic in the 17th and 18th centuries.

“A popularly written glimpse of history along the Grand Strand . . . Eminently readable and varied”—from the award-winning historian and author (The State). From Little River to Georgetown, the South Carolina Grand Strand—popularly known as the Myrtle Beach region—is only fifty-five miles long, yet few coastlines have a richer, more colorful history. Numbered among its parade of colorful characters are hardened explorers, seasoned woodsmen, remarkable women, famous soldiers, powerful politicians, men of violence, rich men, poor men, and gifted visionaries. Planters, Pirates, and Patriots offers historical vignettes of the Grand Strand’s diverse array of heroes, smugglers, and settlers that “have the resonance of real life. Truth is stranger than fiction; it’s also more entertaining” (The Charlotte Observer). “An enthralling and engrossing history with the pace and vividness of a good novel.” —Charles Joyner, author of Down by the Riverside

Fascinating stories of New Jersey's rich railroading history

Legendary figures of the Golden Age of Piracy. Stories of great battles. Contains a Glossary of pirate ships and nautical items.

In The Jersey Shore, Dominick Mazzagetti provides a modern re-telling of the history, culture, and landscapes of this famous region, from the 1600s to the present. The Shore, from Sandy Hook to Cape May, became a national resort in the late 1800s and contributes enormously to New Jersey’s economy today. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 underscored the area’s central place in the state’s identity and the rebuilding efforts after the storm restored its economic health. Divided into chronological and thematic sections, this book will attract general readers interested in the history of the Shore: how it appeared to early European explorers; how the earliest settlers came to the beaches for the whaling trade; the first attractions for tourists in the nineteenth century; and how the coming of railroads, and ultimately automobiles, transformed the Shore into a major vacation destination over a century later. Mazzagetti also explores how the impact of changing national mores on development, race relations, and the environment, impacted the Shore in recent decades and will into the future. Ultimately, this book is an enthusiastic and comprehensive portrait by a native son, whose passion for the region is shared by millions of beachgoers throughout the Northeast.

The Georgia of the North is a historical narrative about Black women and the long civil rights movement in New Jersey from the Great Migration to 1954. Specifically, the critical role played by Black women in forging interracial, cross-class, and cross-gender alliances at the local and national level and their role in securing the passage of progressive civil rights legislation in the Garden State is at the core of this book. This narrative is largely defined by a central question: How and why did New Jersey’s Black leaders, community members, and women in particular, affect major civil rights legislation, legal equality, and integration a decade before the Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas decision? In this analysis, the history of the early Black freedom struggle in New Jersey is predicated on the argument that the Civil Rights Movement began in New Jersey, and that Black women were central actors in this struggle.