(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



A Shameless Plug ... My Available Books [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-09-25

As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. Some of these are now available at Amazon Kindle:

www.amazon.com/...

The Tampa Bay History Tourist: Historical Stories From the Tampa/St Pete Area, From Middens to Mummies to Spontaneous Human Combustion

In many ways, the history of the Tampa Bay area has paralleled that of the United States. It was one of the first portions of the United States to be visited by Europeans, and before that it had a long history of settlement by Native American nations. When these cultures clashed, it produced the longest and bloodiest “Indian Wars” in America’s history. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, the United States began its ascent as a global power, and Tampa Bay was central to that war effort. When America strode onto the world stage, Tampa Bay was the door through which it stepped. After the war, America grew into an economic power, and Tampa Bay grew along with it. But while New York and Pittsburgh and Chicago were where America went to work, Tampa Bay was where it came to play. With its palm trees, beaches, and tropical sun, Tampa Bay became a tourist playground long before Walt Disney ever sketched a cartoon mouse. And today, Tampa and St Petersburg remain one of the top tourist destinations in the world. The historical remnants of that deep past still remain in Tampa Bay. For most people, though, they can be hard to see, scattered inside city parks or forgotten ruins. So this book is a guide to some of the hidden history of Tampa Bay—a history that includes topics ranging from archaeology to mummies to wars to riots to railroads to airlines to spontaneous human combustion. As a longtime resident of St Pete and as a student of history, the author hopes to awaken a sense of our past in both inhabitant and tourist alike, and to bring some of Tampa Bay’s vibrant history back to life. Illustrated.

www.amazon.com/…

A Year’s Travel in the Midwest: Tales From A Roadtrip Through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin

In May of 2015, Lenny Flank left his St Petersburg FL apartment for the last time, climbed into a four-year-old cargo van that had been outfitted with a sleeping bag bed, a homemade sink, a homemade toilet, and a solar panel for electricity, and set out to live on the road. Over the next several years, he toured most of the continental United States from coast to coast and from border to border. He would move with the weather—going south in winter and north in the summer—and would spend a few weeks in each city, long enough to see everything in the area, before moving on to the next. This travelogue is a chronicle of a portion of that roadtrip. In it he reviews some of the favorite places that he visited, giving a description and a historical overview. Some of them are famous tourist destinations: some are known only to the locals. But all have interesting stories to tell. Among them are: the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki; the camera that shot the famous Wright Brothers photo; the place where the last Passenger Pigeon died; wreckage from the "Edmund Fitzgerald"; the most complete T rex skeleton ever found; and the largest shopping mall in the US. Illustrated.

www.amazon.com/…

Homemade Traditional Board Games: A Collection of Fifty Games From Around the World That You Can Make At Home From Simple Materials

Throughout history, human cultures have created a wide variety of games. Some were intended to amuse and entertain children, others were designed to teach military strategy, while some were used for gambling. A few were even used in religious practices as a way to divine the future. This book presents a collection of fifty traditional board games from around the world. They range from strategy-based wargames to chance-determined racing games to simple children’s games. They can all be made from pen, paper, and ordinary household items. The rules are not complex, and are easy to learn. And all of these games are challenging and fun, enough to have lasted for many centuries until our modern day—where most of them are still being played. Illustrated.

www.amazon.com/…

American Monsters: Creatures, Aliens, Ape-Men, Lake Monsters, And Other Mysteries From Across the United States

Humans have always been fascinated with monsters. The most ancient of writings—5,000 year old cuneiform tablets from the Fertile Crescent—contain monster stories about the “wild man” Enkidu. The earliest text known in English, written 1,000 years ago, is Beowulf, a story about a hairy monster who lives in a swamp. Some of our best-selling books and movies are based on creatures and monsters: Vampires, Werewolves, Mummies. Our cable TV channels are filled with “in search of” stories about everything from space aliens to ghosts, Bigfoot to Nessie, Yeti to Chupacabra. Many people, of course, dismiss all of these stories, and perhaps giggle at the people who produce them. But there is also a large community of people who spend their time investigating and researching these reports, who accept them at face value, and who passionately believe in the existence of at least some of these “monsters”. They call themselves “cryptozoologists” (a word that means “student of hidden animals”), and the creatures and monsters they hunt are called “cryptids”. They form discussion groups on the Internet, and hold conventions and conferences, and wander the woods with cameras. And they gather eyewitness reports. Lots of reports, hundreds of them per year. This book is about some of those reports. They range across north and south, east and west, and from mountain to desert to swamp. They assert the existence of everything from giant frog-men to giant bats, from space aliens to lake monsters. Some are well-known among cryptozoologists, some are more obscure. Some are proven hoaxes, some have never been explained. Some were admitted to be fakes but are nevertheless still accepted as real by many. Some were obviously not meant to be taken seriously, some were, and some probably weren’t but are anyway. Illustrated.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/25/2110307/-A-Shameless-Plug-My-Available-Books

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/