Showing results by author "Blake Carter" in All Categories

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.

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.

Delaware: the First State, the Forgotten State, and the strangest little powerhouse you never paid attention to. This is not your high school history textbook. From Lenape fishing villages to Dutch and Swedish turf wars, from Caesar Rodney’s wheezing midnight ride to the explosive rise of DuPont, Delaware has been shaping America while pretending to be invisible. Along the way it perfected the art of being indispensable without being noticed: chickens, chemicals, corporations, and boardwalks all rolled into one.

Still Standing: Taking Care of Yourself When You're Chronically Tired and Stressed Out is a compassionate, science-informed guide for anyone navigating chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, or burnout—especially those who never get a break. Whether you're a working parent, caregiver, student, professional, or neurodivergent adult, this book offers practical, shame-free support for staying afloat when rest feels out of reach. With gentle humor and zero pressure to overhaul your life, Jordan Blake Carter helps you understand what’s really going on in your body and brain.

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.

My new nanny may just be the most stubborn, frustrating…sexy woman I’ve ever met. And I can’t get her out of my f*cking head. She thinks I’m a cold, heartless beast. And she’s right. I’m used to getting what I want, used to people trembling at my feet, but the only trembling Eliana does is when I touch her. Too bad all those curves she hides under baggy sweatshirts and jeans are off limits. Because as much as I want to silence that sassy little mouth of hers with my own, I can’t ruin the first good thing that’s come into my daughter’s life since her mother abandoned us. I ...

First in flight. Fierce in basketball. Divided by barbecue. And stubborn about everything. North Carolina has never been easy to pin down. It dragged its feet on secession yet sent more soldiers to die for the Confederacy than any other state. It boasts of being “first in freedom” while clinging to old hierarchies. It gave the world pirates, bootleggers, moonshine-fueled stock car races, and barbecue feuds so fierce they could outlast most wars. In this sharp and funny history, Jordan Blake Carter takes you on an irreverent ride through four centuries of contradictions.

Too high, too proud, too wild, too sure it has life figured out. From gold-rush fever and silver-boom scandals to ski-town glamour and wildfire panic, High, Holy, and Half-Crazy: An Irreverent History of Colorado takes you on a fast, funny, and unfiltered tour through the Centennial State’s most spectacular contradictions.

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.

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.

California is the land of impossible dreams and inevitable disasters. Gold built it, earthquakes shook it, fires torched it, Hollywood sold it, and Silicon Valley convinced us all to scroll through it. Behind the sunshine and palm trees lies a history of robber barons, cult leaders, political circus acts, and enough contradictions to power the state grid.

This is not your high school history. From atomic showgirls and quickie divorces to Burning Man billionaires and desert survivalists, Nevada has built its reputation on contradictions. It is a place where nothing should have thrived and yet everything did, in the most outrageous ways possible. In this book, you’ll meet miners who gambled away fortunes before breakfast, mobsters who turned Vegas into a playground, politicians who looked the other way, and dreamers who set fire to wooden effigies in the desert just to see what would happen.

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.

Sweet Home, Strange History: An Irreverent History of Alabama pulls no punches and spares no sacred cows. With sharp humor and plenty of grit, it dives into the contradictions that make Alabama unforgettable: pride and shame, resilience and stubbornness, politics that stumble, and football that redeems it all. From Creek mounds to cotton fields, from George Wallace’s finger wagging to Nick Saban’s trophies, this is Alabama in all its messy glory.

Lakes, Labor, and Long Memory traces the real history beneath the politeness, from Indigenous governance and broken treaties to logging camps, iron mines, labor movements, cities shaped by paperwork, and a political culture built on memory rather than myth. This is not a brochure and it is not an apology. It is an irreverent, unsentimental look at how people in Minnesota learned to survive through cooperation, argue without disengaging, and build systems because isolation failed them again and again. Niceness here was never softness. It was strategy.

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.

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.

A pigeon with a shattered leg who saved two hundred soldiers. A sled dog who ran through Arctic storms to deliver life-saving medicine. A stray from Moscow who became the first living creature in space. Throughout history, animals have done far more than stand in the background. They’ve carried messages through battlefields, hauled explorers across frozen wilderness, rescued the lost, and even helped unlock the secrets of science. Some were celebrated with medals and monuments. Others faded into obscurity, their courage nearly forgotten.

Arkansas has always been the state people forget about — until it suddenly crashes onto the front page with diamonds in cow pastures, dueling governors, civil rights battles, or a president from a town called Hope. Mocked as a land of barefoot hillbillies and moonshine stills, praised for its wild rivers and stubborn resilience, Arkansas has never fit neatly into anyone’s box. Irreverent History of Arkansas: Diamonds, Deliverance, and Razorbacks takes listeners on a wry, sharp-eyed tour through the state’s messy past.