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History Lover’s Gift Guide: The 16 Best New History Books for the Holidays

It’s always hard to buy books for book lovers because you just don’t know if they’ve read them already. But you can’t go wrong if you buy a book just published. So here are 16 of the best new history books for the holidays — focusing on New England, of course.

Ben Franklin wouldn’t have missed any of these new history books

You can buy them with just a click — and help independent bookstores and The New England Historical Society.

The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware

Patrick O’Donnell turns five years of research into a fast paced story of the solder-mariners from Marblehead, Mass. Known best for ferrying George Washington over the Delaware, they were a diverse band of brothers who knew they needed to work together in life-or-death circumstances. Led by John Glover, a trusted confidante of George Washington, they served as a highly-skilled special operations unit.

They saved the Continental Army from total destruction after the Battle of Long Island, and they ferried Washington and his army across the Delaware — a near-impossible feat.

Bestselling author Patrick O’Donnell tells a riveting story, bringing new stories to light about the white, black and red men of the Marblehead regiment. (He has written xxx books)

Mighty Storms of New England: The Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Blizzards, and Floods That Shaped the Region

Weather junkies will love this new history book about snowstorms, droughts, heat waves, tornadoes, blizzards and floods. Meteorologist Eric Fisher goes beyond the damage and loss caused by weather events. He also discusses how severe storms changed the course of history. New warning systems, government agencies and technologies developed in their aftermath.

Many New Englanders know Eric Fisher as the chief meteorologist for WBZ-TV and as a contributor to CBS News. He says few places on earth produce such varied weather as New England does. And that, he explains, is why the region breeds one of the highest concentrations of meteorologists in the United States.

Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

Anderson Cooper’s last name may not be Vanderbilt, but he’s a true scion of the dynasty founded by his great-great-great grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The CNN anchor teams up with New York Times bestselling historian Katharine Howe to write a new history book about his fabled family. Though Cornelius Vanderbilt — the “Commodore” — made his fortune in New York, the Vanderbilts frittered away their money in Bar Harbor, Maine, Shelburne Farms, Vt., and Newport, R.I.

Cooper brings an insider’s perspective to the triumphs and failures of the Vanderbilts. He takes us from the rough-and-tumble wharves of old Manhattan to the ornate summer palaces of Newport. He tells us about the secret Vanderbilts who lived on a floor of the Breakers and reveals that he attended Truman Capote’s famous “Black and White” ball at the Plaza Hotel in utero.

One critic described Vanderbilt as a “smart, soulful, page turner.” Another called it “the most interesting and most human of the books that I have read about the super-rich American families of the 19th century.”

Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy

A new history book from Nathaniel Philbrick is always good news in New England, though this one is a bit different. Philbrick, his wife Melissa and their dog followed the path taken by Washington during his presidential visits to the new nation. So the book reads as part history, part memoir and part travelogue. One reader noted the author and his wife “make pleasant company.”

Why do Washington’s travels matter? Because in 1789 the United States was still a loose, quarrelsome confederation. The former colonists didn’t think of themselves as Americans. Washington, beloved by all, set out to change that. He went from Mount Vernon to the new capital in New York and then took a month-long tour of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. He ventured onto Long Island and then headed south. Travels with George includes extensive maps, pictures and documents along the way.

The Boston Globe called it “a lively, courageous, and masterful achievement.”

Letters From Red Farm: The Untold Story of the Friendship Between Helen Keller and Journalist Joseph Edgar Chamberlin

When Helen Keller was eight years old, she and Annie Sullivan visited Boston. There she met a man who would change her life: Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, popular Boston Transcript columnist. Chamberlin owned Red Farm in Wrentham, Mass., and Keller visited often. So did artists and intellectuals of the day, like Louise Guiney, Fred Holland Day and Edward Everett Hale.

The book tells the story of Keller’s friendship with Chamberlin, who became her literary mentor. It also reintroduces Chamberlin to the public and explores how Keller grew interested in social activism. Letters From Red Farm, written by Chamberlin’s great-great-granddaughter, uses previously unpublished letters and new research.

Disability lawyer Haben Girma called the revelations in the book “stunning.” “The letters from Keller and her friends make her feel even more relatable to contemporary readers,” she wrote.

Bette Davis Black and White

Film star Bette Davis was a Yankee gal committed to civil rights for African Americans. Bette Davis Black and White tells the story of Davis’ outspoken advocacy for civil rights. It also describes her black co-stars’ efforts to disrupt America’s racial fantasies.

The book analyzes four of her best known films against Americans’ historic attitudes about race. It includes testimonies from Davis’ black contemporaries and letters from her African-American fans,

University of Chicago Press has scheduled the book’s release for Dec. 13, 2021.

Reading the Gravestones of Old New England

Author John G.S. Hanson has walked through many an old New England graveyard and learned a thing or two along the way. During his explorations of old cemeteries he found an incredible range of poetic messages. They express not only emotions, but the culture, religion and literature of their age.

Hanson identifies the texts and authors that inspired the messages carved in stone. He also interprets the tastes and beliefs of the survivors who did the choosing.

McFarland & Company has scheduled the book’s release for Nov. 5, 2021.

Passing Through the Fire: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in the Civil War

Civil War buffs and fans of Joshua Chamberlain will welcome this new history book about the hero of Gettysburg. It tells the story of his miraculous survival from battlefield surgery after getting hit in the groin with a bullet. While convalescing he considered leaving the Army. His decision to return affected the outcome of the war.

Passing Through the Fire follows Chamberlain’s during his Civil War years, from Maryland to Pennsylvania to Virginia. Author Brian Swartz takes the reader beyond the battlefield as well, reveals the real person behind the legend. He includes photos and maps not seen by the “average Civil war” student.

“If you have an interest in the Civil War and its leadership this is a book must,” writes one happy reader.

The Isolation Artist: Scandal, Deception and the Last Days of Robert Indiana

Pop artist Robert Indiana had fame and lots and lots of money, but he died alone and uncared for in horrendous living conditions. Born Robert Clark in Indiana, he changed his last name and eventually moved to Vinalhaven Island in Maine. He wanted fame, and he got it with his iconic Love sculpture in 1965.

Indiana had no interest in the business of art, and so he surrounded himself with people to manage his life and career. When he died in 2018, suspicions arose about fraudulent artwork, elder abuse, a coerced will and an inconclusive autopsy.

Author Bob Keyes tells a fast-paced story of an artist’s life that straddled Downeast Maine and the unscrupulous world of high-end art.

Deliberate Evil: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster, and the 1830 Murder of a Salem Slave Trader

When a Salem slave trader was murdered in cold blood in 1830, the national press took notice. Not only did two of the conspirators come from the wealthy and influential Crowninshield family, but Daniel Webster led the prosecution. A young Nathaniel Hawthorne knew several of the people involved in the murder. As always, he observed and took notes.

Edward J. Renehan, Jr., uses previously unavailable source materials about the murder, the investigations, the scandal-ridden trials and the grisly execution at the end. The Chicago Review Press has scheduled its release for Dec. 7, 2021.

Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White

In this new history book, Robert F. Kennedy belongs with Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin and Cesar Chavez. Patricia Sullivan, a civil rights historian, presents Robert Kennedy at the center of the 1960s civil rights movement.

She tells how protests against Jim Crow started out as a political problem for the young attorney general, but then became a moral one. Under Kennedy, the Justice Department battled Southern resistance to voter registration and school desegregation.

Justice Rising is an eye-opening account of Kennedy’s vision and energy drove momentum for change. Until his death, he led what he called “the revolution within our gates, the struggle of the American Negro for full equality and full freedom.”

Historian Douglas Brinkley called Justice Rising “a profound and uplifting account of Robert F. Kennedy’s brave crusade for racial equality.”

The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III

George III, America’s last king, got a reputation for stupidity and evil that never went away. Until now. Historian Andrew Roberts shows how revolutionary propagandists like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine gave George a bad rap.

In reality, George was wise, humane, and even enlightened. Unfortunately, he had talented enemies and incompetent ministers, and he suffered from debilitating mental illness and horrible luck. Roberts paints a nuanced portrait of George and describes his forgotten accomplishments.

The Best Ever! Parades in New England 1788-1940

Every New England town has a parade tradition, according to historian Jane Nylander, who specializes in domestic life in New England from the 1850s to the 1950s. She observes that those traditions tell us much about the culture, both locally and nationally.

Nylander, former president of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, includes nearly 300 photos, some of them quite rare, in The Best Ever! They include the Federal Ship carried in the 1788 Ratification parade at New Haven, Conn., to 1940 when the parade tradition largely ended when World War II began.

It’s Better To Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness

In this instant classic, Seth Wickersham tells the story of the most dominant — and secretive — NFL team ever. Wickersham, a Connecticut resident, is one of the country’s premier investigative sportswriters.

He has covered the Patriots since 2001, when Brady took over as starting quarterback. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously confidential documents, he presents the definitive account of the Patriots’ dynasty. The book is chock full of fresh and revealing information about the team’s two dominant personalities, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.

Wickersham explores Belichick’s tactical brilliance, strange work habits, affection for his players and determination to dominate the league. He shines especially in his portrait of Brady, though, taking the reader from Brady’s childhood in northern California to his split from the Patriots.

Even for Jets fans, this New York Times bestseller is as hard to put down as a bowl of salted peanuts.

Two Centuries of Maine Shipbuilding

This lavishly illustrated book begins with the dugout and birchbark canoes made by the Wabanaki and their ancestors. When Europeans began to settle in the 17th century, they immediately began building vessels and never really stopped.

Author Nathan Lipfert takes the reader from the first merchant and fishing vessels, through the great schooners, decline of deepwater sail, the steel shipyards and World War II all the way to the present. Lipfert, curator emeritus of the Maine Maritime Museum, relies on a trove of resources about Maine’s historic industry. The book includes a bibliography, two appendices, a glossary and hundreds of illustrations.

The Peyton Place Murder: The True Crime Story Behind The Novel That Shocked The Nation

The Peyton Place Murder is not a sequel to the novel Peyton Place, but a new history book about the murder that inspired Grace Metalious to write her sensational best seller back in the 1950s. The murder, though, known as “the Sheep Pen Murder,” took place in Gilmanton, N.H., in the late 1940s.

Author Renee Mallett weaves together the story of Grace Metalious, who grew up poor in Manchester, N.H., and Barbara Roberts, the young woman who confessed to the killing.

This book is for anyone who enjoys reading about true crime and small-town life in new England.

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Richard Potter, Celebrity Black Magician of the 19th Century

Richard Potter, the son of a former slave, won fame and fortune with a bag of magic tricks and a voice that spoke from ladies’ purses and gentlemen’s pockets.

Born during the last year of the American Revolution, he trained as a magician and ventriloquist. He traveled the world entertaining enthusiastic audiences and settled on an estate in New Hampshire. The traces of Richard Potter’s life can still be found in an Andover, N.H., train station, in the pages of the novel Peyton Place and in the magical arts.

John Hodgson, who wrote a biography of Potter, called him the first black celebrity, the first American ventriloquist and the most famous performer in the United States.

Successful, wealthy, well-liked—all those words describe Richard Potter. So does another: tragedy.

Richard Potter

He was born in Hopkinton, Mass., in 1783 to a black mother and a white father. His mother, Dinah, worked as a servant in the estate of Sir Charles Frankland, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell and collector of the Port of Boston. Frankland had fallen in love with Agnes Surriage, a beautiful tavern wench in Marblehead, Mass. He paid for her education and kept her as his mistress. That did not sit well with Boston society, and so Frankland bought land in the distant town of Hopkinton. There he built a showplace mansion.

By the time of Richard’s birth, Sir Charles had died and the estate started to decay. Some people thought Richard’s father was Sir Charles’s son. But it was George Stimson, a randy revolutionary war veteran. Stimson, according to church records, had “made attempts on the chastity of several women.”

One of those women was Dinah. Slavers had captured her on the Guinea coast and sold her on a Boston pier. But in 1769, a slave in Cambridge, Mass., brought suit against his master. He won his freedom and payment for his work. Soon after, Frankland’s estate freed Dinah and her children and paid them for their work.

Youth

Richard Potter spent the first 10 years of his life between the Hopkinton estate and Frankland’s townhouse in Boston. He learned to read at the Hopkinton District School. At the age of 10 he went into service for two years with Isaac Surriage, Agnes’ brother. Then he engaged himself to a Boston merchant. At around age 16, he took a trip to Europe with the merchant’s son-in-law. There Richard, always nimble and quick, picked up skills as a ropedancer and tightrope walker.

A ropedancer

From there the outlines of his life get muddy. He went to work at the New Hampshire Hotel in Portsmouth. An Italian tightrope walker named Signior Manfredi brought his show to that city, and Richard Potter may have joined him then as a minor performer in the troupe.

Somehow, probably in Boston, he met a Scottish magician and ventriloquist named John Rannie. By 1804, he had a job as Rannie’s stage assistant.

19th-century Portsmouth

John Rannie

Rannie swallowed razors, turned a bottle of water into Madeira wine, smashed watches then restored them. He made voices talk from under furniture and gentlemen’s pockets. In one gruesome trick, he cut off a chicken’s head and reattached it. It then ran off unharmed. One of Richard’s jobs was to find two chickens with identical markings.

John Rannie had spent a month in an Inverness jail for his role in a food riot (called “meal mobbing”). Authorities then banished him from Scotland, and so he went on an extended tour of the United States with Richard Potter at his side. They performed from Maine to the West Indies to New Orleans.

The Exchange Coffee House

Rannie retired in Boston, then returned to Europe in 1811. Richard Potter took to the stage on his own with many of Rannie’s tricks, including ventriloquism. He often played Boston at such venues as the Columbian Museum, the Exchange Coffee House, Concert Hall and Julien Hall.

Richard Potter’s Act

“He intends to give an evening’s brush to sweep away dull cares,” proclaimed his handbills. He called himself “Mr. Potter, the Ventriloquist and Comedian, from Saddler’s Wells (London).” Many Bostonians considered the theatre disreputable, but Sadler’s Wells was a respectable house patronized by fashionable Londoners. Richard’s nod to the English theater told people he put on a sophisticated, European-style show.

Sadler’s Wells

In 1808, he married Sally Harris, described as “beautiful and graceful.” They lived on Beacon Hill, a tight African-American community with a meeting house, a school and Underground Railroad stations. In 1811 Potter joined Boston’s African Lodge No. 459, the first black Masonic lodge in America. Another well-known African-American belonged to it: David Walker, who advocated the violent overthrow of slavery in his incendiary pamphlet, An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.

But there was nothing incendiary about Richard Potter. One of the few black performers of his day, he presented himself as well-mannered, modest, charming. He dressed fastidiously in a neat frock coat, cravat and waistcoat with lapels, along with a flowing blue robe adorned with Masonic symbols.

“While other magicians catered to the enlightened and up-to-date, Potter presented a family entertainment,” wrote Paul A. Johnson. He played to children, who he admitted for half price. Those children included Oliver Wendell Holmes and George Hill, who became a comedic actor known as Yankee Hill. Both fondly recalled Potter’s shows later in life.

George Hill

The Magic

Richard Potter promised “100 curious but mysterious experiments” in the broadsheet advertising his show.

He did card tricks, made coins pass through wine glasses, broke eggs into a hat and then turned them into pancakes. One of his most popular acts was the enchanted egg, which magically traveled from one hat to another and then to his shoulder.

Map mmarked with the Columbian Museum, one of Potter’s Boston venues.

He threw his voice into a teapot, mimicked birds and animals, made a child speak from a ladies purse. So strange and startling were his effects they sometimes caused people to faint.

He also acted out scenes from plays like the Wag of Windsor with his wife. They sang comic songs like “Giles Scroggins’ Ghost” and “Barney Leave the Girls Alone.” Sally sang “The Nosegay Girl.”

Playing with Fire

For seven years he played mostly before audiences in New England and the Hudson Valley. He earned as much as $250 a day, worth about $3,000 in today’s money.

By 1819, his act evolved to include knife throwing and playing with fire. He appeared in Providence as the “Anti-Combustible Man Salamander,” bending a red-hot iron bar with his bare feet and drawing it over his tongue. He walked on hot coals in his bare feet, plunged his hand into molten lead and climbed into an oven where meat was roasting—always emerging unscathed.

His reputation grew with his fame, and it was said he could crawl through a solid log. Some believed he and Sally had performed the Hindu Rope Trick—throwing a rope up into the open air, then climbing it and disappearing.

Advertisement for a reproduction of the trick by stage magician Howard Thurston.

In 1820, he embarked on a four-year grand tour that took his show to the South, the West, Europe and the Caribbean.

Discrimination

Surely he knew of the dangers of travel for a black man. Sometimes he wore a turban when performing, suggesting he came from the West Indies or even India.

Once, in Mobile, Ala., Potter got kicked out of a hotel because of his race. He moved to another hotel, played for 12 nights and took in $4,800 in silver, which he carried in a nail cask. Upon his departure he learned highway robbers planned to waylay him. So Richard Potter let it be known he was going one way the next day, then left that night in the opposite direction.

Word of a planned slave uprising preceded his arrival on the eastern seaboard. Dozens of plotters, including Denmark Vesey, were arrested and executed. Richard Potter decided to bypass Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C., lucrative venues but dangerous for a free black man.

He faced discrimination in the North as well.

In a New Haven hotel, the proprietor wouldn’t let him into the dining room because of his skin color. But when the host started to carve the roast pig for dinner, Potter threw his voice so the pig seemed to squeal.

New Hampshire

In 1814, he bought 175 acres in Andover, N.H., a small town on Ragged Mountain. He may have chosen Andover because of his friendship with Benjamin Thompson, a tavern owner who traveled with him as his assistant. The town of 1,800 had only 17 black residents in 1830, but he won the respect and trust of his neighbors. One described him as “public spirited, honorable in business, prompt to pay, a kind neighbor and trusted friend.”

Ragged Mountain

Richard Potter built a large, ornate house on his property and hired laborers to farm it. He only lived there intermittently, until about 1823. The Potters entertained frequently. One night, a guest complained about the alcohol served at dinner. So he broke the bottle and presto! He produced a baby chick—then made it speak.

The house no longer stands, but the neighborhood is still known as Potter Place. Richard and Sally Potter are buried on his former property, and the Andover Historical Society planted a garden where his house once stood.

Family Trouble

At some point, Sally stopped performing with her husband. She begin to drink and spend extravagantly. Richard Potter returned from the road in 1825 to encounter debts and lawsuits caused by his wife. He almost lost his house. The sheriff did seize his livestock, furniture and hay and oats. Potter published a notice saying that only he could buy anything on his account.

Tragedy, however, had already followed Richard Potter. He and Sally had two sons and a daughter. Their son Henry died at age seven in a wagon accident.

Daughter Jeanette was described by a local historian as “a half-idiot, given to uncontrollable lewdness.” She died in 1831 at age 16.

Their son Richard, Jr., took after his mother, turning to drink and squandering money.

Richard, Sr., died on Sept. 20, 1835 at 52, leaving an estate worth $6,000. Richard, Jr., took over the Andover farm and cared for his mother. Sally died a year later, on Oct. 24, 1836. Richard, Jr., ran up debts and auctioned off the farm in 1837. He had his father’s magic kit and knew his act, so he went on the road as “Little Potter.” He failed and returned to Andover only to face lawsuits for unpaid bills. Then he mortgaged the magic kit. When it was seized for nonpayment, Richard, Jr., stole it back and disappeared from the historic record.

Potter Place railroad station

Remembering Richard Potter

He may have been forgotten elsewhere, but New Hampshire remembers Richard Potter. The village in Andover where he had his estate is still known as Potter Place, and a train station bears the name.

In 1965, the Manchester chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians officially name themselves the “Black Richard Ring.”

New Hampshire writer Grace Metalious modeled a character after Richard Potter in her novel Peyton Place: Samuel Peyton was a wealthy black man who built a castle on a hill in a small New Hampshire town.

For years, a magician named Robert Olson has re-enacted Richard Potter’s magic show. See it here.

Much of Richard Potter’s early life was an enigma. In 2018, John Hodgson cleared up a lot of the mystery in his 2018 book, Richard Potter: America’s First Black Celebrity. You can help independent bookstores and the New England Historical Society by buying it here.

With thanks also to Playing with Race in the Early Republic: Mr. Potter, the Ventriloquist by Paul E. Johnson, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 89, No. 2 (June 2016), pp. 257-285. Image of Ragged Mountain By Tom Morgan – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5121853. This story was updated in 2022.

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