These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

    We meet Arlene, Hanff's high-flying friend who's social life (and wardrobe) put Hanff's one-and-one-half room apartment and simple writer's life in perspective. We walk through Nina's garden, 16 stories up and witness famous New York rites of passage from the hysteria of St. Patrick's Day to Shakespeare's Garden and the neighbors who saved it, to block parties, with their 'sizzling Italian sausages and shish kebab and flossy plates of pate and brie,' all told in Hanff's inimitable style. We join Hanff as she flies to London to realize a lifetime dream at the Ambassador Theatre: opening night for the play, '84, Charing Cross Road.' And we witness the elegant Arlene as she meets and falls in love with a New York City cop.

    Truly this is the best How To book I've read in years. Bernadette Mayer makes a various world of real people in real times and places, a fact of love and loving use. She has impeccable insight and humor. She is a consummate poet no matter what’s for supper or who eats it. Would that all genius were as generous.” —Robert Creeley

     New York is pierogi, pasta fagiole, and chicken soup: Avgolemono, Brazilian Canja, Kreplach, Soo Chow, and Ajiaco. New York is Sylvia's Ribs, plus Edna Lewis's Greens and Mrs. Kornick's Polish Corn Bread. And the New York Cookbook is all of this, and much, much more. Collected from all five boroughs by New York Times food writer Molly O'Neill, here are over 500 recipes--and over 700 photographs--that celebrate one thing: a passion for food and eating. Deborah Markow's Braised Lamb Shanks and Mrs. Urscilla O'Connor's Codfish Puffs. Four-star chef Andre Soltner's Roast Chicken and Vernon Jordan's Jerk Style Jamaican Chicken. Robert Motherwell's Brandade de Morue and the Abyssinian Baptist Church's Long-Cooked Green Beans. Plus Katharine Hepburn's Brownies, Lisa's Mexican Flan, and Sally Darr's Golden Delicious Tart. Includes shopping guides, cooking tips, and walking tours.Winner of a 1992 IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award. Winner of the 1992 James Beard Food and Beverage Book Award. A percentage of the royalties goes to Citymeals-on-Wheels.

    With his other 'shorter' collections Black + Blues and Third World Poems, Middle Passages creates a kind of chisel which may well lead us into a projected third trilogy. Here is a political angle to Brathwaite's Caribbean & New World quest, with new notes of protest and lament. It marks a Sisyphean stage of Third World history in which things fall apart and everyone's achievements come tumbling back down upon their heads and into their hearts, like the great stone which King Sisyphus was condemned to keep heaving back up the same hill in hell - a postmodernist implosion already signalled by Baldwin, Patterson, Soyinka and Achebe and more negatively by V.S. Naipaul; but given a new dimension here by Brathwaite's rhythmical and 'video' affirmations. And so Middle Passages includes poems for those modern heroes who are the pegs by which the mountain must be climbed again: Maroon resistance, the poets Nicolas Guillen, the Cuban revolutionary, and Mikey Smith, stoned to death on Stony Hill; the great musicians (Ellington, Bessie Smith); and Third World leaders Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney and Nelson Mandela.

    Kinky Friedman, lead singer of the outrageous country-and-western band The Texas Jewboys, is the author of five detective stories featuring himself as the wise-cracking, cigar-smoking, cat-loving sleuth.This omnibus includes A Case of Lone Star, Greenwich Killing Time, and When the Cat's Away.

    This book is the middle volume of a three-part work devoted to the evolution of New York's architecture and urbanism in the Metropolitan Era, the three-quarters of a century from the Civil War's conclusion through the depression of the 1930s.

    At each stop she uncovers the mythic narratives that elude other observers: Didion tells us about the fantasies the media construct around crime victims and presidential candidates; she gives us new interpretations of the stories of Nancy Reagan and Patty Hearst; she charts America's rollercoaster ride through evanescent booms and hard times that won't go away. A bracing amalgam of skepticism and sympathy, After Henry is further proof of Joan Didion's infallible radar for the true spirit of our age.

    Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig tell the story of Central Park's people-the merchants and landowners who launched the project; the immigrant and African-American residents who were displaced by the park; the politicians, gentlemen, and artists who disputed its design and operation; the German gardeners, Irish laborers, and Yankee engineers who built it; and the generations of New Yorkers for whom Central Park was their only backyard. In tracing the park's history, Blackmar and Rosenzweig give us the history of New York, and bring to life larger issues about the meaning of the word "public" in a democratic society.

    Winner of the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians and the New York State Historical Association Manuscript Prize

    It begins with the language of nutrition. The lessons of the USDA food guide pyramid, the Mediterranean pyramid, and a vegetarian pyramid from the American Dietetic Association (ADA) are used as a foundation for the Institute's seven principles of healthy cooking. They call upon the chef to introduce a wider array of foods such as fruits, grains, and vegetables into dishes. Successful strategies for cooking with less fat, moderating salt, and choosing and using healthy sweeteners are included as well. A separate section on creating healthy menus covers menu and recipe development, nutritional analysis, and nutrition labeling in menus and advertising.Special features of this incomparable guide include: Seven principles of healthy cooking Nearly 400 of the Institute's best recipes - 200 of them new to this edition Over 250 photos that illustrate basic and advanced preparation techniques and inspire with elegant presentations for healthful dishes Practical tips for healthy sauteing, stir frying, grilling, baking, smoke-roasting, and more Dependable guidelines for selecting healthy, fresh ingredients A nutritional analysis for each recipe, with separate breakdowns for sauces, side dishes, and other components Filled with time-tested and refined techniques for maximizing both nutrition and flavor, "The Professional Chef's(R) Techniques of Healthy Cooking, Second Edition," is a completely trustworthy and irreplaceable reference for anyone interested in creating the finest, healthiest, and most flavorful of meals.

    A leading advocate for the arts in America and recent recipient of the 1997 National Medal of the Arts, the 1997 Kennedy Center Honors, and the George Abbott Carbonell Award for Achievement, Edward Villella was recently inducted into the State of Florida Artist Hall of Fame.  Villella also received the Frances Holleman Breathitt Award for Excellence for his contributions to the arts and to education, the thirty-eighth annual Capezio Dance Award, and Award for Lifetime Achievement, becoming only the fourth dance personality to receive National Endowment for the Arts advisory artistic director of the Miami City Ballet, which has won worldwide acclaim under his direction.

    A spell-binding achievement, Winter Eyes richly fulfills the promise Booklist saw when it hailed Dancing on Tisha B'av as the debut of "a bright new talent in American fiction."

    Hasidic People takes the reader from the various neighborhood settlements through years of growth to today's tragic incidents and conflicts. In an engaging style, rich with personal insight, Mintz invites us into this old world within the new, a way of life at once foreign and yet intrinsic to the American experience.

    "Will touch memories across generations".--Booklist. "Authentic details plus Nolan's misty paintings capture the period with grace and care".--Kirkus Reviews. Full color.

    First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, Sylvia draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence.Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster.