Meet the folks who slip out of history books like they're playing the Kansas City shuffle. In this fascinating collection of stories, Paul Kirkman has dug up all sorts of head-scratchers: how did Jesse James rob a bank with John F. Kennedy, and how could a Beatles concert in the 1960s fail to make money? Watch a cow explode in a kitchen, frogs rain down from the sky and dogs pay for a public library system. Learn how Harry Houdini was trapped in a phone booth, why Clark Gable haunted street corners in a clown outfit and what kept Kansas City in Missouri.

From El Chupacabra to the Marx Brothers, Clay Coppedge has a talent for digging into Texas's most unusual history. Strange as they may seem, many of these Texas-sized legends are surprisingly true, like Pancho Villa's film contract and the notorious Crash at Crush, a staged train collision and failed publicity stunt that turned tragic outside of Katy. Whether fact or lore, each tale is irrefutably part of a unique and fascinating heritage that invigorates the spirit like a Texas frontier remedy.

Tennessee has never been a stranger to strangeness. Stories of the weird, wild, and wonderful abound in the Volunteer state. Join author and seasoned journalist Kelly Kazek as she tracks down the extraordinary stories that other history books overlook. Each section covers a different outlandish theme of Tennessee history colorful characters, strange sites, intriguing incidents, tombstone tales, odd occurrences, and curious creatures. Readers will discover the brilliant phenomenon of synchronized firefly flashes in the Smoky Mountain town of Elmont, take on the world's largest Moon Pie in Chattanooga and learn Tennessee's history of damaging earthquakes. From the humorous to the haunting, the madcap to the macabre, Forgotten Tales of Tennessee offers a collection as remarkable as the state itself.

Take a journey through Arkansas' forgotten past and find the colorful characters, unusual stories and strange occurrences left out of conventional history books. Authors Edward and Karen Underwood weave fact and fun in this offbeat, gripping and little-known history of the Natural State. Discover the Tantrabobus monster rumored to lurk in the hills of the Ozarks, meet the imposters who faked the state's first history museum and learn the story behind Arkansas' lost amusement park, Dogpatch, USA. Truth really is stranger than fiction in Arkansas, and this one-of-a-kind state has the stories to prove it

Truth, after all, still remains stranger and more engaging than most legends. And Missouri, of course, leads every other place in truth. Hop aboard Long's dragon boat or take advantage of 1846 wind wagon technology to plunge into the forgotten tales of this fascinating place. Hobnob cautiously with Stagger Lee, Mike Fink and Calamity Jane and view the chamber pot war from a safe distance. Trade witticisms with Alphonse Wetmore and Mark Twain, the frontier folk who keep us civilized today. If you keep company with storyteller Mary Collins Barile, you'll even catch a glimpse of the Mississippi River running backward from an earthquake that was all Missouri's fault.

Such was the wisdom of the Pittsburgh Daily Gazette and Advertiser in 1866 when describing a railway boss's threat to decapitate a former employee. Pittsburgh has many such stories of strange but mostly true events. Local author Thomas White delves into these lost tales, from Lewis and Clark's inauspicious start involving an intoxicated boat builder to the death ray of inventor Nikola Tesla. A 1907 lion attack at Luna Park, death by spontaneous combustion, Jack the Ripper's rumored visit to the city and an umpire who was rescued from an angry crowd by Pirates players are all part of the forgotten history of the Steel City.

In 1821, François Chouteau set up a fur-trading outpost along the Missouri River, bringing the first settlement of Europeans to what would become Kansas City, named after the Kansa tribe of Native Americans who inhabited the area. At the center of a growing nation, the "City on the Bluff" would build and thrive as a river town, a gateway to the West, and a railroad hub, absorbing the influences of pioneers and immigrants traveling through or making it their home. Striving to become "A City Beautiful," its parks and boulevards drew attention from around the world. These are the beginnings of a town carved out of a hillside in the wilderness, transformed into an exciting metropolis that would eventually be called home by Walt Disney, Ernest Hemingway, Jesse James, and many others who left a lasting mark on history.

Often photographed in a cowboy hat with her middle finger held defiantly in the air, Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916–2000) left a vibrant legacy as a leader of the Black Power and feminist movements. In the first biography of Kennedy, Sherie M. Randolph traces the life and political influence of this strikingly bold and controversial radical activist. Rather than simply reacting to the predominantly white feminist movement, Kennedy brought the lessons of Black Power to white feminism and built bridges in the struggles against racism and sexism. Randolph narrates Kennedy's progressive upbringing, her pathbreaking graduation from Columbia Law School, and her long career as a media-savvy activist, showing how Kennedy rose to founding roles in organizations such as the National Black Feminist Organization and the National Organization for Women, allying herself with both white and black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, H. Rap Brown, Betty Friedan, and Shirley Chisholm. Making use of an extensive and previously uncollected archive, Randolph demonstrates profound connections within the histories of the new left, civil rights, Black Power, and feminism, showing that black feminism was pivotal in shaping postwar U.S. liberation movements.

Wild characters, diverse cultures, spooky myths and slippery sales schemes color Colorado's past. In a place where shameless showdowns and dusty shootouts over money, drink and women were once standard procedure, storytelling around campfires became an integral part of a rich heritage. From the jackalope and vampires to Indian curses and snake oil salesmen, the Centennial State has it all. Weirder still are the strange but true stories like that of the first body buried in La Junta's Fairview Cemetery, a man who landed there for refusing alcohol to a kid, and that of the hotel in Telluride that once offered a promotion that included funeral costs with your stay. While history may have neglected these silly, seedy and salacious stories, author Stephanie Waters has rediscovered Colorado's best forgotten tales.

As baseball was becoming the national pastime, Kansas was settling into statehood, with hundreds of towns growing up with the game. The early history of baseball in Kansas, chronicled in this book, is the story of those towns and the ballparks they built, of the local fans and teams playing out the drama of the American dream in the heart of the country. Mark Eberle's history spans the years between the Civil War–era and the start of World War II, encapsulating a time when baseball was adopted by early settlers, then taken up by soldiers sent west, and finally by teams formed to express the identity of growing towns and the diverse communities of African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. As elsewhere in the country, these teams represented businesses, churches, schools, military units, and prisons. There were men's teams and women's, some segregated by race and others integrated, some for adults and others for youngsters. Among them we find famous barnstormers like the House of David, the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry who played at Fort Wallace in the 1860s, and Babe Didrikson pitching the first inning of a 1934 game in Hays. Where some of these games took place, baseball is still played, and Kansas Baseball, 1858–1941 takes us to nine of them, some of the oldest in the country. These ballparks, still used for their original purpose, are living history, and in their stories Eberle captures a vibrant image of the state's past and a vision of many innings yet to be played—a storied history and promising future that readers will be tempted to visit with this book as an informative and congenial guide.