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  • Published: 15 May 2014
  • ISBN: 9780307463982
  • Imprint: Crown
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $36.00

Here Is Where

Discovering America's Great Forgotten History



Andrew Carroll, who is best known for massive, newsmaking cultural initiatives such as the American Poetry and Literacy Project (which has given away over a million poetry books to the public) and the Legacy Project (an unprecedented effort to preserve letters from every U.S. war) is also the author of the bestselling multimedia sensation War Letters. The genesis of Here Is Where was Carroll's discovery of a remarkable story about Edwin Booth--brother of John Wilkes Booth--saving the life of Abraham Lincoln's son. Carroll located the site of the Booth-Lincoln encounter and began compulsively identifying other unmarked historic places throughout America. Here is Where recounts his initial journey which required him to drive, fly, boat, bike, hike, kayak and train across the country--and into America's great forgotten past. Even readers who don't consider themselves history buffs will be amazed by the hidden history Carroll uncovered.

Here Is Where chronicles Andrew Carroll’s eye-opening – and at times hilarious -- journey across America to find and explore unmarked historic sites where extraordinary moments occurred and remarkable individuals once lived. Sparking the idea for this book was Carroll’s visit to the spot where Abraham Lincoln’s son was saved by the brother of Lincoln’s assassin. Carroll wondered, How many other unmarked places are there where intriguing events have unfolded and that we walk past every day, not realizing their significance? To answer that question, Carroll ultimately trekked to every region of the country -- by car, train, plane, helicopter, bus, bike, and kayak and on foot. Among the things he learned:
 
*Where in North America the oldest sample of human DNA was discovered
 
* Where America’s deadliest maritime disaster took place, a calamity worse than the fate of the Titanic
 
*Which virtually unknown American scientist saved hundreds of millions of lives
 
*Which famous Prohibition agent was the brother of a notorious gangster
 
*How a 14-year-old farm boy’s brainstorm led to the creation of television
 
Featured prominently in Here Is Where are an abundance of firsts (from the first use of modern anesthesia to the first cremation to the first murder conviction based on forensic evidence); outrages (from riots to massacres to forced sterilizations); and breakthroughs (from the invention, inside a prison, of a revolutionary weapon; to the recovery, deep in the Alaskan tundra, of a super-virus; to the building of the rocket that made possible space travel). Here Is Where is thoroughly entertaining, but it’s also a profound reminder that the places we pass by often harbor amazing secrets and that there are countless other astonishing stories still out there, waiting to be found. 

Look for Andrew's new book, My Fellow Soldiers

  • Published: 15 May 2014
  • ISBN: 9780307463982
  • Imprint: Crown
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $36.00

About the author

Andrew Carroll

Andrew Carroll is 35 and lives in Washington DC. Following a fire that destroyed his house and his own small collection of letters, he founded the Legacy Project, an international all-volunteer initiative to preserve wartime correspondence. He is the editor of three New York Times bestsellers: War Letters, Letters of a Nation, and In Our Own Words. He is also executive director of the American Poetry and Literacy Project, which he co-founded with the late Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. In the USA he has been responsible for bringing back the "Armed Service Editions" (ASEs), which were pocket-sized editions of national bestsellers and literary classics handed out to U.S troops stationed abroad during World War II.

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