Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-278) and index.

In this fascinating collection of historical vignettes, author Martin W. Sandler restores to memory important events, people, and developments that have been lost to time. Though barely known today, these are major historical stories, from Ziryab, an eighth-century black slave whose influence on music, cuisine, fashion, and manners still reverberates, to Cahokia, a 12th century city north of the Rio Grande, which at its zenith contained a population greater than any contemporary European city, to the worst peacetime maritime disaster ever, the explosion and sinking of the Sultana on the Mississippi in 1865, and the deadliest fire in U.S. history, in Peshtigo, Wis. These tales are far from trivia; they illuminate little-known American and foreign achievements, ingenuity, heroics, blunders, and tragedies that changed the course of history and resonate today.--From publisher description.