About Time: Dark Days and Deeds

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly
Kelly provides a detailed and readable examination of the black death, which killed about a third of Europe’s population in the 14^th century.

The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas and Plundered Shipwrecks, from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day by Bella Bathurst
An engrossing, multi-angled history that envelops the reader in the unique (and vanishing) culture of all things related to ships and shipwrecks.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
A fascinating exploration of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair that follows parallel stories of two very different men whose lives were connected to the Fair:  the fair’s architect, and a mass murderer.

A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester
Winchester, a geologist and master tale-teller, provides a clear and compelling account of the natural disaster that almost obliterated San Francisco.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of those who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
This gripping account – winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction – shows how the Dust Bowl was largely a man-made disaster.  Eyewitness accounts bring the period alive.