Richard Snow

A propulsive history chronicling the conception and creation of Disneyland, the masterpiece California theme park, as told like never before by popular historian Richard Snow. One day in the early 1950s, Walt Disney stood looking over 240 acres of farmland in Anaheim, California, and imagined building a park where people “could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White in a world still powered by steam and fire for a day or a week or (if the visitor is slightly mad) forever.” Despite his wealth and fame, exactly no one wanted Disney to build such a park. Not his brother Roy, who ran the company’s finances; not the bankers; and not his wife, Lillian. Amusement parks at that time, such as Coney Island, were a generally despised business, sagging and sordid remnants of bygone days. Disney was told that he would only be heading toward financial ruin. But Walt persevered, initially financing the park against his own life insurance policy and later with sponsorship from ABC and the sale of thousands and thousands of Davy Crockett coonskin caps. Disney assembled a talented team of engineers, architects, artists, animators, landscapers, and even a retired admiral to transform his ideas into a soaring yet soothing wonderland of a park. The catch was that they had only a year and a day in which to build it. On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened its gates…and the first day was a disaster. Disney was nearly suicidal with grief that he had failed on a grand scale. But the curious masses kept coming, and the rest is entertainment history. Eight hundred million visitors have flocked to the park since then. In Disney’s Land, Richard Snow brilliantly presents the entire spectacular story, a wild ride from vision to realization, and an epic of innovation and error that reflects the uniqueness of the man determined to build “the happiest place on earth” with a watchmaker’s precision, an artist’s conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.

Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World

Disney's Land

In "A Measureless Peril," the historian Richard Snow captures all the drama of the merciless contest between the quickly built U.S. warships and the ever-more cunning and lethal U-boats that controlled the sea lanes of the Atlantic during WWII.

America in the Fight for the Atlantic, the Longest Battle of World War II

A Measureless Peril

From the acclaimed popular historian Richard Snow, who “writes with verve and a keen eye” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a fresh and entertaining account of Henry Ford and his invention of the Model T—the ugly, cranky, invincible machine that defined twentieth-century America. Every century or so, our republic has been remade by a new technology: 170 years ago the railroad changed Americans’ conception of space and time; in our era, the microprocessor revolutionized how humans communicate. But in the early twentieth century the agent of creative destruction was the gasoline engine, as put to work by an unknown and relentlessly industrious young man named Henry Ford. Born the same year as the battle of Gettysburg, Ford died two years after the atomic bombs fell, and his life personified the tremendous technological changes achieved in that span. Growing up as a Michigan farm boy with a bone-deep loathing of farming, Ford intuitively saw the advantages of internal combustion. Resourceful and fearless, he built his first gasoline engine out of scavenged industrial scraps. It was the size of a sewing machine. From there, scene by scene, Richard Snow vividly shows Ford using his innate mechanical abilities, hard work, and radical imagination as he transformed American industry. In many ways, of course, Ford’s story is well known; in many more ways, it is not. Richard Snow masterfully weaves together a fascinating narrative of Ford’s rise to fame through his greatest invention, the Model T. When Ford first unveiled this car, it took twelve and a half hours to build one. A little more than a decade later, it took exactly one minute. In making his car so quickly and so cheaply that his own workers could easily afford it, Ford created the cycle of consumerism that we still inhabit. Our country changed in a mere decade, and Ford became a national hero. But then he soured, and the benevolent side of his character went into an ever-deepening eclipse, even as the America he had remade evolved beyond all imagining into a global power capable of producing on a vast scale not only cars, but airplanes, ships, machinery, and an infinity of household devices. A highly pleasurable read, filled with scenes and incidents from Ford’s life, particularly during the intense phase of his secretive competition with other early car manufacturers, I Invented the Modern Age shows Richard Snow at the height of his powers as a popular historian and reclaims from history Henry Ford, the remarkable man who, indeed, invented the modern world as we know it.

The Rise of Henry Ford

I Invented the Modern Age

Patrick O'Brian

An incomplete, final installment of the Aubrey/Maturin seafaring adventure series features three printed chapters and a facsimile of the manuscript, which includes details about Jack Aubrey's post-promotion mission to the South Africa station and a duel between Stephen Maturin and an impertinent officer.

The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey

A recreation of the devastating fire that burned the town of Hinckley, Minnesota and its surrounding forests in August of 1894 depicts the extraordinary acts of heroism undertaken by ordinary people in the face of tragedy

The Burning

Complete Source for History, Grading, and Prices

A Guide Book of Flying Eagle and Indian Head Cents

In A Guide Book of Indian and Flying Eagle Cents, third edition, award-winning author Richard Snow examines the Flying Eagle and Indian Head cents of 1856 to 1909, exploring mintages, challenges for the collector, and interesting varieties. His date-by-date research is enhanced by historical essays as well as an engaging overview of the series by the "dean of American numismatics," Q. David Bowers. High-quality, full-color photographs illustrate each coin. Snow's detailed research includes yearly production notes; market values in multiple grades (including Brown, Red/Brown, and full Red Mint State); certified population data; tips on collecting circulated, Mint State, and Proof coins; and more. This expanded third edition includes an illustrated biography of designer James Longacre; an appendix on detecting counterfeit and altered coins; an appendix of more than 1,000 recent auction records; a history of market prices going back to 1946; and a bibliography for further researchplus sections on pattern coins and toned Proofs.

A Guide Book of Flying Eagle and Indian Head Cents, 3rd Edition

Like the hand of the Devil, the minute hand casts its ominous shadow as the Doomsday Clock ticks closer to midnight. And as millions face annihilation at the hands of a madman, on the other side of the mirror, the great and the good have been granted a stage of their own: Alfred Hitchcock plays the wolf and Marilyn Monroe plays the sex kitten. And Pablo Picasso paints his greatest masterwork since Guernica whilst proclaiming his genius. While, in the demon forest, the still heart of Richard Wagner begins to beat once more. Welcome to the strange, hallucinatory fever dream that is the Clockwork Mirror - one of the broken places where the silver glass of cosmic time is cracked wide and the titanic engines of creation are revealed, each tumbling mirror shard reflecting a vision from the edge of the inferno. Here are worlds populated by bold heroes and lethal sirens - alternate realities home to malevolent doctors and ruthless assassins, where deadly trials must be faced and darkest truths are revealed just before the killing blow is delivered...

The Clockwork Mirror

Describes the naval battle that changed the course of the Civil War and the future of sea power, when the North built a complicated, innovative warship out of iron, the Monitor, in record time, to combat the Merrimack.

Richard Snow

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