Showing results by author "Carter Blake" in All Categories

Illinois never waited to be admired. It made itself necessary. This book tells the story of a state that learned early how to move things, reroute systems, and survive contradiction without apology. Illinois didn’t rise on speeches or symbolism. It rose on rivers, railroads, deals, and decisions that kept everything else running. Illinois: Prairie, Power, and the Audacity to Reverse a River is an unsentimental history of power built through connection, adaptation, and stubborn refusal to collapse.

Before Columbus Got Lost rewrites the opening chapter of the Americas with humor, heart, and honesty. Jordan Blake Carter invites listeners to step into a continent that was never empty and never primitive. From the astronomers of Chaco Canyon to the philosophers of the Haudenosaunee, from the engineers who carved irrigation canals through desert sand to the artists who painted prayers onto clay, this is a history that refuses to whisper.

When wealthy heiress Victoria Glass vanishes without a trace, seasoned detective Miles Harper expects another ordinary missing-person case. But the deeper he digs, the more the city itself seems to watch him.

America tells itself it was born in freedom and perfected through progress. The truth is harder to look at. For more than two hundred years, the government has used its own armies and laws to control the very people it claims to protect, from the soldiers who crushed the Whiskey Rebellion to the police who fired on students at Kent State. Friendly Fire is a fearless and often darkly funny exploration of how power in America defends itself.

Welcome to Florida, the only state that could turn a swamp into a spectacle and a scandal into a tourist attraction. From conquistadors chasing myths to retirees chasing golf balls, Sunburns, Scandals, and Swamp Things tells the story of America’s strangest state with humor, heart, and just enough truth to sting. Historian and essayist Jordan Blake Carter takes listeners on a wild ride through five centuries of chaos and charisma, uncovering the patterns that make Florida both paradise and punchline.

In Corn, Caucuses, and Catastrophes, Jordan Blake Carter takes listeners on a rollicking ride through Iowa’s past and present. From the Honey War fought over beehives to penny auctions that defied the banks, from floods that drowned cities to butter cows that drew crowds, Iowa has always been equal parts resilient and ridiculous. This is the state that feeds the nation, humiliates presidential candidates at the State Fair, and rebuilds after every disaster with casseroles in hand.

Irreverent Maine: Lobsters, Lumber, and Legendary Weirdness is a history that refuses to be polite. From the Wabanaki and the first bumbling European settlers to lobster feasts and lobster wars, from Civil War heroes and shipwrecked sailors to eccentric governors and ghost stories, this book tells Maine’s story with humor, grit, and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

New Hampshire’s industrial revolution didn’t unfold in quiet workshops. It exploded along the rivers in a storm of spinning frames, flooded mills, and enough cotton lint to make the mountains sneeze.

Arizona is not just saguaros, sunsets, and the Grand Canyon. It is Tombstone shootouts stretched into legend, UFOs drifting over Phoenix, retirees clogging the left lane in golf carts, and politicians who treat chaos as a hobby. It is Indigenous ingenuity outlasting modern sprawl, Hoover Dam holding back both water and hubris, and snowbirds insisting it’s a “dry heat” while their sneakers melt on the pavement. In Cactus, Chaos, and Contradictions, Jordan Blake Carter takes you on a sarcastic, sharp-tongued romp through the state’s weird past and wild present.

Welcome to Utah, where wagon ruts meet billion-dollar malls, and sacred prophecy collides with PR campaigns. This is not the version you got in seminary. From red rock petroglyphs and Spanish explorers to polygamist raids, forged scriptures, and ski resorts, Zion in the Desert tells the strange, scrappy, and often uncomfortable history of a state that was never just one thing. The book dives headfirst into the contradictions that shaped Utah: faith and resistance, empire and exodus, miracles and cover-ups.

In this clear, compassionate guide, Jordan Blake Carter offers practical tools and research-based insight to help you better understand the impacts of CPTSD—and begin the slow, steady process of healing. This audiobook combines trauma education with actionable strategies to support nervous system regulation, emotional resilience, and long-term recovery.

From the outside, it looks easy to explain. Rain. Trees. Coffee. A few volcanoes. People in fleece jackets who pretend they are not staring at the mountains even though they absolutely are. But that version of Washington leaves out nearly everything that matters. This is a history of a place built on contradiction. Rain forests and deserts. Ports and wheat fields. Counterculture coffee shops and irrigation canals. Fierce environmental protection alongside relentless industrial ambition. A state that argues constantly with itself and somehow survives stronger for it.

Georgia has always been the South’s wild card. It built empires from cotton, birthed legends of justice, produced presidents, shaped hip hop, hosted the world, and flipped national elections when no one was looking. But beneath the peaches and pageantry lies a history of resistance, reinvention, and relentless contradiction.

In Blizzards, Banks, and Bakken: An Irreverent History of North Dakota, Jordan Blake Carter takes listeners on a journey across two centuries of stubborn survival. Meet the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara who built thriving river towns long before statehood. March with the populists who took over their own government in the name of fairness. Survive the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and the floods that nearly swallowed cities whole. Then stand in the glow of oil rigs and Friday-night stadium lights, watching a state still learning how to balance change with endurance.

In Gold, Guns, and Grizzlies, Jordan Blake Carter takes you through the hilarious, gritty, and often absurd history of the Treasure State. You’ll meet vigilantes who hanged more neighbors than outlaws, homesteaders who discovered optimism is not a substitute for rainfall, and tourists who thought bison were selfie-friendly.

If America is one big dysfunctional family, Idaho is the cousin you forget about until something bizarre drags it back into the spotlight. Potatoes? Sure. But also Ruby Ridge, Nazi compounds, hippies in hot springs, and a six-ton spud on wheels. This isn’t the glossy brochure. Irreverent Idaho tells the state’s story with sharp wit and a wink: Indigenous ingenuity, gold-rush chaos, vigilante “justice,” Mormon pioneers, mining strikes, and Boise’s eternal identity crisis. Idaho is where contradictions thrive — prophets and paranoids, farmers and miners, militia bunkers and music festivals.

Alaska’s history is as wild as its wilderness, and just as unwilling to be tamed. Before the Russians showed up for fur and trouble, Indigenous peoples had been thriving here for thousands of years, navigating ice, sea, and politics with skill that would make modern survival shows blush. Then came the explorers who “discovered” places already mapped in someone else’s memory, the gold rush stampedes, the salmon wars, the Japanese invasion in WWII, the oil-fueled pipeline boom, and the endless political battles over land, resources, and who gets to decide Alaska’s future.

It's been almost a year since I've seen her, the only woman that's ever gotten under my skin, and made me wish I was a better man. More than just the washed up hockey player, turned sports journalist whose body is almost as scarred as his soul. Now, she's pregnant with my brother's baby. A baby he wants nothing to do with. And he's asked me to clean up his mess. I have no intention of offering her the deal he's laid out. I have a deal of my own. One that will finally make her mine.

New York never learned to whisper. It shouts, sings, honks, and argues its way through four centuries of chaos, creativity, and contradiction. From the Haudenosaunee confederacy to Wall Street excess, from canal diggers to coffee-shop philosophers, Empire, Egos, and Everything Bagels takes listeners on a wild, witty ride through the Empire State’s tangled past.

From online outrage to everyday indifference, modern life can make compassion feel naïve or even impossible. Compassion in a Cynical World is a guide for holding on to your humanity when it would be easier to shut down. Drawing on real-life stories, research, and the author’s own journey through burnout and disillusionment, this book offers practical tools for staying open-hearted without being overwhelmed.