In this fresh and fascinating collection of historical vignettes, Martin W. Sandler (author of Resolute and Atlantic Ocean) 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 estimated to have been as high as 40,000 (more than any contemporary European city), to the worst peacetime maritime disaster ever, the explosion and sinking of the Sultana on the Mississippi in 1865. 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--Publisher's description.