The past was never quiet.

History does not repeat itself exactly, but its echoes are impossible to ignore. When History Rhymes explores recurring patterns of power, fear, ambition, financial speculation, war, and technological change. From the illusion of permanent empires to democracies under pressure and revolutions that betray their ideals, David Fooks asks what the past can teach us while the future is still unwritten.

Freedom was more than the end of ownership. It had to be sought, risked, protected, and made livable. Drawing on narratives, memoirs, letters, official records, and later recollections, David Fooks follows the voices of people who endured American slavery, resisted it, escaped it, and worked to build lives after emancipation. Their testimony illuminates family separation, childhood, labor, faith, learning, escape, the Civil War, and the continuing struggle to make freedom last.

In the last days of the Civil War, the sea offered fortune, freedom—and death.

The Blockade Runner: A Story of Love and Defiance During the Last Days of the Civil War follows the dangerous world of men and women caught in the struggle to run the Union blockade. Fast ships, desperate cargoes, divided loyalties, and the constant threat of capture turn every voyage into a gamble.

Set against the fading Confederacy and the waters of the Carolina coast and beyond, David Fooks combines maritime history, wartime danger, and human drama in a story of courage, love, survival, and defiance.

History remembers kings, generals, explorers, and presidents. But that is only half the story.

The Other Half of History: Fifteen Women of Courage, Power, and Defiance tells the stories of remarkable women who challenged the limits placed upon them and helped shape the worlds in which they lived. Across centuries and cultures, these women led, resisted, explored, fought, negotiated, endured, and changed history—often in ways traditional accounts have overlooked.

Written for readers who enjoy history as human story rather than a collection of dates, David Fooks brings these women and their times vividly to life while restoring them to the larger historical narrative.

Step into one of the most dangerous landscapes of the Civil War.

The Most Dangerous Land carries readers into the Great Dismal Swamp, a vast wilderness of dark water, tangled cypress, danger, and refuge. Against the upheaval of the Civil War, people struggling for freedom, survival, loyalty, and love are drawn into a place where the rules of the outside world can disappear beneath the trees.

Blending historical detail with compelling storytelling, David Fooks brings a little-known corner of American history to life and explores the courage of people forced to make extraordinary choices in extraordinary times.

In every tall ship was a crew of real people—and a sea of untold stories.

From the Age of Discovery to the end of the Age of Sail, wooden ships carried explorers, merchants, sailors, soldiers, pirates, and adventurers across the world's oceans. Their voyages built empires, opened trade routes, fought wars, and transformed history. Yet behind the famous names and great events were human beings whose experiences could be courageous, desperate, humorous, brutal, and astonishing.

In Sailors of the Tall Ships, David Fooks looks beyond the familiar textbook accounts to reveal the people beneath the sails—including unexpected stories surrounding figures such as Columbus, Magellan, and Nelson, and the remarkable women who went to sea in an overwhelmingly male world.