On April 30, 1911, a fire ignited in Frank Greens hay shed that changed the city of Bangor forever. From the ashes of the Great Fire, the logging and mill town emerged as a modernized metropolis. In this collection of retrospective articles, Wayne E. Reilly takes a look at the town of Bangor in the years before the fire, when illegal barrooms and brothels were as rampant as the outbreaks of typhoid and smallpox. He explores Bangor in its boomtown days, when ice harvesting and logging were thriving industries, steamboats ferried passengers between cities and a lively theatre scene drew audiences to see the little Broadway in the Great North Woods. One look through this vibrant window into the past will leave you with your nose pressed to the glass, nostalgic for the olden days of Maines Queen City.

When celebrity aviator Harry Atwood made the first aeroplane flight over Bangor in 1912, observers were astonished. It was a sign that the city had recovered from the great fire of 1911 that had destroyed its downtown the year before. While some events are well known, many stories from turn-of-the-century Bangor have been lost to time. In this collection, local author Wayne E. Reilly brings some of the most exciting and intriguing hidden Bangor tales to light--from a gas explosion that left a thirty-foot crater in the middle of downtown to the escape of a mayor's pet pig. Join Reilly as he reveals the hidden stories from Queen City history.

Since its settlement in 1769, Bangor's greatest resource has been its people. Long before 1834, when the town on the Penobscot became a city, future legends were born who transformed it into a world-class community. Hannibal Hamlin served as Abraham Lincoln's first vice president. Timber tycoon Sam Hersey financed urban development while less affluent folk such as Molly Molasses also made their mark. When philanthropists Stephen and Tabitha King are not writing best-selling novels, they are spreading their wealth throughout the community. Bangor's melting pot includes the Italian Baldacci family and the Jewish baker Reuben Cohen, who, with his wife Clara, raised their son Bill, a US senator and defense secretary. More infamous but equally legendary is brothel keeper Fanny Jones. Paul Bunyan earned a statue on Main Street. Airport troop greeters Kay Lebowitz and Bill Knight round out the list of notables. They are all jewels in Bangor's crown, and each in their own way is a bona fide legend.

The lighted clock tower of Union Station, the marquee of the Bijou Theater, and the spacious lobby of the Penobscot Exchange Hotel are memorable images from Bangor's past. Settled in 1769, Bangor boomed as the lumbering capital of the world in the nineteenth century and as a retail hub in the twentieth century. For one hundred years, picture postcards have showcased West Broadway's mansions and the steamboat and railroad terminals along the Penobscot riverfront. Bangor in Vintage Postcards includes images from the city's past, ranging from a World War I victory parade to the 1923 flood.

Over 13,000 Americans have been murdered in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries because of their sexual orientation and gender presentation. In Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memory of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims, Stephen Sprinkle puts a human face on the outrage and loss suffered when people die from anti-gay hatred. Beginning with new developments in the story of Matthew Shepard's murder in Laramie, Wyoming, Sprinkle tells the stories of fourteen representative LGBTQ victims whose lives were savagely cut short due to homophobia and transphobia. These are stories about people who could be your neighbor, classmate, co-worker, or friend-real, everyday people whose love was foreclosed, relationships brutally terminated, and future contributions stolen from us by outrageous, irrational hatred. Told lovingly yet unflinchingly, Unfinished Lives lifts the stories of these LGBTQ victims from undeserved obscurity, allowing their memory to live again. Relying on personal interviews and visits to the locations where these people lived, loved, and died, Sprinkle records the raw emotions, powerful movements for social change, and unexpectedly hopeful communities that arise from the ruins of those people whose only "offense" was to live as they were born to be. Part portraiture, part crime narrative, and part ethnography, Unfinished Lives is poised to change the conversation on hate crimes in the United States.