Martin J. Smith Books in Order

Twenty unexpected innovations, events, and personalities provide an unconventional history of modern American life. The authors trace familiar habits and products back to unusual origins, exploring how changes in entertainment, technology, fashion, and consumption acquired lasting influence.

Twenty American failures become case studies in unintended consequences and misjudgment. From disastrous promotions to flawed inventions and construction problems, the authors examine how memorable mistakes shaped public life and what can be learned from them.

Drought exposes a controversial developer's body near a California town divided over his ambitions. As police officer Ron Starke investigates business deals and family secrets, advancing wildfires threaten to erase both evidence and the community surrounding the crime.

Essays drawn from decades of reporting follow unusual people and places across the American Southwest. Entertainers, eccentric builders, athletes, and controversial attractions reveal a region whose ordinary realities often depart sharply from its familiar mythology.

This history examines how Trinidad, Colorado, became a major destination for gender-confirmation surgery. Through surgeons' careers and patients' differing experiences, Smith explores the town's medical legacy and the complicated personal lives behind a widely repeated reputation.

Behind the federal duck-stamp contest lies a world of intense artistic competition and conservation funding. Smith follows painters, judges, and other participants to explore how wildlife art, hunting, and environmental protection meet in an unusual national institution.

A veteran returns for a former comrade's funeral and reunites with the only men who know his darkest wartime secret. Fifty years after Vietnam, the possibility of exposure threatens the family and fragile peace he has built.