A culture of corruption pervaded the New York Police Department, where payoffs, protection, and shakedowns of gambling rackets and drug dealers were common practice. The so-called blue code of silence protected the minority of crooked cops from the sanction of the majority.Into this maelstrom came a working class, Brooklyn-born, Italian cop with long hair, a beard, and a taste for opera and ballet. Frank Serpico was a man who couldn't be silenced—or bought—and he refused to go along with the system. He had sworn an oath to uphold the law, even if the perpetrators happened to be other cops. For this unwavering commitment to justice, Serpico nearly paid with his life.

    His power and poisoned purity of vision are reminiscent of Arthur Rimbaud, and, like the strongest poets of the New York School, Carroll transforms the everyday details of city life into poetry. In language at once delicate, hallucinatory, and menacing, his major themes—love, friendship, the exquisite pains and pleasures of drugs, and, above all, the ever-present city—emerge in an atmosphere where dream and reality mingle on equal terms. It is an astonishing debut by an important American writer and artist.

    and includes "Mureau"-composed from the writings of Henry David Thoreau.

    New York City as it was 1853-1901, through 196 wonderful photographs: great blizzard, Lincoln's funeral procession, great buildings, much more.

    Dore Ashton captures the vitality of the cultural milieu in which the New York School artists worked and argued and critiqued each other's work from the 1930s to the 1950s. Working from unsifted archives, from contemporary newspapers and books, and from extensive conversations with the men and women who participated in the rise of the New York School, Ashton provides a rich cultural and intellectual history of this period. In examining the complex sources of this important movement—from the WPA program of the 1930s and the influx of European ideas to the recognition in the 1950s of American painting on an international scale—she conveys the concerns of an extraordinary group of artists including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, and many others. Rare documentary photographs illustrate Ashton's classic appraisal of the New York School scene.

    Nearly 100 classic images by noted photographer: Rockefeller Center on the rise, Bowery restaurants, dramatic views of the City's bridges, Washington Square, old movie houses, rows of old tenements laced with laundry, Wall Street, Flatiron Building, waterfront, and many other landmarks.

    THE 400 BLOWS ANTOINE AND COLETTE STOLEN KISSES BED AND BOARD LOVE ON THE RUN

    Memories for Tomorrow: The Memoirs of Jean-Louis Barrault by Barrault