Reading recommendations for the city.
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The du Ponts: From Gunpowder to Lycra by Gerard Colby. The big single-volume history of the family that built modern Wilmington — gunpowder, chemicals, the company town, the politics, the philanthropy, the scandals. Long, dense, and indispensable for understanding why so much of the Brandywine Valley looks the way it does.
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Beneath a Ruthless Sun by Gilbert King. A nonfiction account of a Florida injustice that grew out of the segregated South, but with a Wilmington thread — the Du Pont and Carpenter philanthropies that funded civil-rights legal aid in the state. Useful background for the racial history that any visitor will eventually notice.
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The Wyeths: The Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901–1945 edited by Betsy James Wyeth. The first generation of the Wyeth family illustrators in their own words, working in nearby Chadds Ford and sending illustrations into the world from the Brandywine Valley. A genuine feel for the landscape that runs through the family's painting.
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Wilmington's Lost Neighborhood: The Story of the Cool Spring/Tilton Park Area by Wilmington History. A neighbourhood-history of one of the city's lost Black communities, demolished for urban renewal in the 1960s. A short, hard, useful read for understanding the city as it is today.