Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe.In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city.The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.

    At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New York's prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she yearns to find balance between being American and being Puerto Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of hilarious dates, she finds that independence brings its own set of challenges.At once a universally poignant coming-of-age tale and a brave and heartfelt immigrant's story, Almost a Woman is Santiago's triumphant journey into womanhood.  "A universal tale familiar to thousands of immigrants to this country, but made special by Santiago's simplicity and honesty." --The Miami Herald"A courageous memoir. . . . One witnesses. . .the blessings, contradictions and restraints of Puerto Rican culture." --The Washington Post Book World

    Her specialty is troubled teenagers. A teacher in a public school for years, she knows kids and the men and women who teach them!"In COP OF THE YEAR master storyteller Kathryn Shay pens an emotionally powerful tale that leaves you breathless. Woven into this riveting plot are wonderfully written characters that grab your heart and don't let go. Bravo Ms. Shay!" RT Book Reviews***Winner of Best Superromance of the Year, the Golden Leaf Award and the Desert Quill Award as well as numerous 5 star ratings from reviewers.***The last thing by-the-book Captain Mitch Lansing wants to do is work in a high school classroom to improve relationships between at risk kids and the police department. Mostly, he doesn’t want to deal with teenagers. But when he meets unorthodox teacher, Cassie Smith, his world goes off kilter. So does Cassie’s. She's totally against all he stands for, so why is it she finds herself attracted to him? The further they go into the year, the more they’re drawn to each other. And the more the kids also come to care about Mitch. However, because of his past in Vietnam, he tries to distance himself from everybody. He can’t, and he must learn to accept Cassie and her kids into his life. With several highly emotional scenes and deeply moving situations, this story will go straight to your heart.Praise for COP OF THE YEAR:“Kathryn Shay writes from the heart! Her stories are about real people with real lives. You will laugh and cry with her characters. COP OF THE YEAR is sure to be one of the best books to hit the shelves this year!” The Literary Times“Prepare yourself for a fabulous emotional ride that will have you reaching for the tissues and leave you with a renewed sense of hope.” Genie Romex Reviews“Kathryn Shay has penned a most unusual novel. The teacher/cop relationship feels natural enough, and the dialogue is a standout. But oddly enough, though I found the romance to be satisfying, it's the secondary characters of the kids I remember most from the story. The teenage pregnancies, the gang involvement, the drug usage all are a part of today's high school scene, but Shay makes this a story of hope, not despair. The ending almost brought me to tears. Three cheers!” The Romance Reader“Ms. Shay writes a strong and compelling dissertation on a very real and complicated social issue of our time, weaving in an unforgettable, touching love story.” Old Book Barn GazetteIf you like books about cop romances, teacher romances and teacher student relationships, be sure to read the rest of this high powered series, BECAUSE IT’S CHRISTMAS, COUNT ON ME, BETWEEN TWO WORLDS and IF YOU WERE MINE.

    There an odd and amiable band of nature lovers devote themselves to observing and protecting the park's rich wildlife. When a pair of red-tailed hawks builds a nest atop a Fifth Avenue apartment house across the street from the model-boat pond, Marie Winn and her fellow "Regulars" are soon transformed into obsessed hawkwatchers. The hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking saga of Pale Male and his mate as they struggle to raise a family in their unprecedented nest site, and the affectionate portrait of the humans who fall under their spell will delight and inspire readers for years to come.

    It tells the story of Wojnarowicz's creative birth, from publishing his first photographs and writing what would become The Waterfront Journals to completing his tour de force, Close to the Knives, at the height of his fame. In the Shadow of the American Dream is finally a record of the private Wojnarowicz, falling in love, exploring erotic possibilities on the Hudson River piers, becoming overwhelmed by the demands of survival, and searching for the pleasure and freedom he believed one could live on.

    Presents a literary portrait of the city of New York through the eyes of more than a hundred writers, from Washington Irving to Oscar Hijuelos.

    It's Almanzo's birthday, and he spends the day on the Wilder farm learning to train his two little calves and flying down the hill on his birthday sled.

    A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the sandhogs—black, white, Irish, Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. Above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will both bless and curse three generations.

    Otherwise, you're on your own." Suspicious of any child-rearing theories beyond "Your children are either the center of your life or they're not," Trillin has clearly reveled in the role of family man. Acknowledging the special perils to the privacy of people living with a writer who occasionally remarks, "I hope you're not under the impression that what you just said was off the record," Trillin deals with the subject of family in a way that is loving, honest, and wildly funny in Family Man.

    A self-described "suicidal, strung-out, psychotic Jew under thirty" Ilyana retreats into her astonishing mind, prays to obscure Catholic saints, and seeks her equilibrium in six white lines laid out on the kitchen table of a squalid Lower East Side apartment. Masochism and nihilism form the twin poles of Ilyana's heroin blurred existence, but this was not always so.

    Every night, at a rundown tavern with a magnificent bar called the Cedar Tavern, an extraordinary group or painters, writers, poets, and hangers-on arrive to drink, argue, tell jokes, fight, start affairs, and bang out a powerful new aesthetic. Their style is playful, irreverent, tradition-shattering, and brilliant. Out of these friendships, and these conversations, will come the works of art and poetry that will define New York City as the capital of world culture--abstract expressionism and the New York School of Poetry.A richly detailed portrait of one of the great movements in American arts and letters, The Last Avant-Garde covers the years 1948-1966 and focuses on four fast friends--the poets Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch. Lehman brings to vivid life the extraordinary creative ferment of the time and place, the relationship of great friendship to art, and the powerful influence that a group of visual artisits--especially Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Fairfield Porter--had on the literary efforts of the New York School.The Last Avant-Garde is both a definitive and lively view of a quintessentially American aesthetic and an exploration of the dynamics of creativity.

    For more than thirty years, Simon's wry and astute observations on life, love, and the human condition have been making audiences laugh uproariously even as his beautifully realized characters touch their hearts. These five plays, including the Pulitzer- and Tony-award-winning Lost in Yonkers, show Simon at the pinnacle of his extraordinary career. Rumors Lost in Yonkers Jake's Women Laughter on the 23rd Floor London Suite Including the author's introduction: "How to Stop Writing and Other Impossibilities"

    Hot Seat is Rich's definitive chronicle of his long run--an encyclopedic anthology of more than three hundred of his best reviews and essays, interspersed with further thoughts, entirely new to this volume, about his adventures on the aisle at the tumultuous time when Broadway was decimated by AIDS and colonized by the British musical.         Rich's opening-night accounts of an era's biggest hits (from The  Phantom of the Opera to Six Degrees of Separation) and most notorious bombs (from Moose Murders to Carrie) are here, as are his year-by-year reflections on major careers both established (Stephen Sondheim, Peter Brook, Jessica Tandy) and new (August Wilson, Kevin Kline, Caryl Churchill).         Here as well are Rich's final words on his sparring matches with Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Hare, among others, and his retrospective lists of which plays and performances he admired most and least--as well as lists of the productions he feels he over--and underrated the first time around.        From the tragic opening night of David Merrick's 42nd Street to the unprecedented triumph of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Hot Seat captures what was in every way a dramatic chapter in cultural history, as told and lived by a journalist with the best seat and sharpest eye in the house.

    Both the veterinary community and dog-owners alike are hailing the arrival of "Living With Blind Dogs".In it, Levin successfully answers the question most commonly asked by devastated pet-lovers: "What do I do now?" Levin came to write this book, when after a decade in human ophthalmic nursing she left that field to manage an ophthalmic veterinary clinic. Here, she was able to meld her knowledge of ophthalmology with her love of dogs, developing badly needed educational materials for clients. Levin took the opportunity to meet many blind dogs and talk with their owners. Caroline Levin is also an award-winning dog trainer. She has an in-depth understanding of canine behavior and the methods used to successfully train dogs. She shows her dogs in obedience competitions and the new sport of musical canine freestyle.

    When Bill Bratton was sworn in as New York City's police commissioner in 1994, he made what many considered a bold promise: The NYPD would fight crime in every borough...and win.  It seemed foolhardy; even everybody knows you can't win the war on crime.  But Bratton delivered.  In an extraordinary twenty-seven months, serious crime in New York City went down by 33 percent, the murder rate was cut in half--and Bill Bratton was heralded as the most charismatic  and respected law enforcement official in America..  In this outspoken account of his news-making career, Bratton reveals how his cutting-edge policing strategies brought about the historic reduction in crime.Bratton's success made national news and landed him on the cover of Time.  It also landed him in political hot water.  Bratton earned such positive press that before he'd completed his first week on the job, the administration of New York's media-hungry mayor Rudolph Giuliani, threatened to fire him.  Bratton gives a vivid, behind-the-scenes look at the sizzle and substance, and he pulls no punches describing the personalities who really run the city.Bratton grew up in a working-class Boston neighborhood, always dreaming of being a cop.  As a young officer under Robert di Grazia, Boston's progressive police commissioner, he got a ground-level view of real police reform and also saw what happens when an outspoken, dynamic, reform-minded police commissioner starts to outshine an ambitious mayor.  He was soon in the forefront of the community policing movement and a rising star in the profession.  Bratton had turned around four major police departments when he accepted the number one police job in America.When Bratton arrived at the NYPD, New York's Finest were almost hiding; they had given up on preventing crime and were trying only to respond to it.  Narcotics,  Vice,  Auto Theft, and the Gun Squads all worked banker's hours while the competition--the bad guys--worked around the clock.  Bratton changed that.  He brought talent to the top and instilled pride in the force; he listened to the people in the neighborhoods and to the cops on the street.  Bratton and his "dream team" created Compstat, a combination of computer statistics analysis and an unwavering demand for accountability.  Cops were called on the carpet, and crime began to drop.  With Bratton on the job, New York City was turned around.Today, New York's plummeting crime rate and improved quality of life remain a national success story.  Bratton is directly responsible, and his strategies are being studied and implemented by police forces across the country and around the world.  In Turnaround, Bratton shows how the war on crime can be won once and for all.

    Inaccessible and unknown to most New Yorkers, the structures and machinery captured in Stanley Greenberg's luminous black-and-white prints deliver the essential services that a city's inhabitants usually take for granted. Many of these vast and imposing facilities have in recent decades been neglected or fallen into disuse. Others remain intact and in continuous use. Greenberg's dark and poetic images document how a city works, its technological evolution since the 19th century, and the toll that deterioration and years of deferred maintenance can take on the soul of a city.With a 4 x 5 monorail view camera and using only available light, Greenberg photographed sites in all five of New York's boroughs, many now permanently sealed in the interests of national security. Among the invisible places recorded are the massive valve chambers in the water tunnels 300 feet underground and other features of New York's extraordinary water system; the anchorages of the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Verrazano Narrows bridges; the dry dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; the derelict power station at Floyd Bennett Field; the elegant, turn-of-the-century steam turbine in Brooklyn's Pratt Institute; crumbling ruins on Ellis Island and Roosevelt Island; hidden sections of Grand Central Station and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine; the West Side rail yards in Manhattan; the secret Nike missile silos in the Bronx; one of the last remaining manual switch rooms in the New York subway system; the faded grandeur of the City Hall Subway Station, its bronze chandeliers and leaded glass ceilings still largely undamaged; and the vast Brooklyn Army Terminal, once the world's largest warehouse.Greenberg's photographs of this hidden city uncover long-forgotten engineering feats, magnificent examples of skilled craftsmanship, and fascinating clues about New York's industrial past, as well as reveal the increasing aesthetic apathy of today's builders. His images chronicle both the beauty and the banal necessity of this rich legacy, threatened by public ignorance and bureaucratic indifference. Invisible New York offers a unique perspective on one of the world's great cities and alerts us to the hidden sites and essential facilities found in all cities which are slowly and secretly decaying or disappearing.

    Gore Vidal once referred to her as our best comic novelist, deserving to be as widely read as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. This biography is a celebration of her triumphant rise from the ashes of near oblivion to her establishment among the giants of twentieth-century American literature. Dawn Powell lived in New York City for forty-seven years but always maintained the perspective of a "permanent visitor." She distilled this into her many poems, stories, articles, plays, and her dizzying and inventive novels.

    Our authors blanket the city researching where to indulge in just about anything you want, anytime, including the world's best cuisine choices, Broadway theaters and avant-garde Chelsea art, Soho's decadent shopping, Brooklyn's Williamsburg and Park Slope, Central Park's gathering spaces, offbeat outer borough adventures, and dozens of restaurants and bars where New Yorkers go to hang out, lay back and enjoy neighborhood life in one of the world's truly epic cities. Written by three New Yorkers with three opinionated takes on the city they love, this guide will help you navigate your way like a local.

    Imagine a grunge nort Jersey version of John McPhee's classic The Pine Barrens and you'll get some idea of the idiosyncratic, fact-filled, and highly original work that is Robert Sullivan's The Meadowlands.  Just five miles west of New York City, this vilified, half-developed, half-untamed, much dumped-on, and sometimes odiferous tract of swampland is home to rare birds and missing bodies, tranquil marshes and a major sports arena, burning garbage dumps and corporate headquarters, the remains of the original Penn Station--and maybe, just ,maybe, of the late Jimmy Hoffa.  Robert Sullivan proves himself to be this fragile yet amazingly resilient region's perfect expolorer, historian, archaeologist, and comic bard.

    This concept was first proposed by Louis Sullivan in his 1891 article, “The High-Building Question” (inspired by William Le Baron Jenney’s recently completed Manhattan Building in Chicago.) Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962), American draftsman and architect, studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis where the Beaux Arts school was favored. Early in his career he worked as a draftsman in the office of Cass Gilbert until he became a freelance delineator. In 1922, Ferris took part in a series of zoning envelope studies that sought to comply with the earlier city legislation. Such were the key ingredients that gave rise to the book at hand.In The Metropolis of Tomorrow, 49 stunning illustrations depict towering structures, personal space, wide avenues, and rooftop parks — features that now exist in many innovative, densely populated urban landscapes. Ferriss uses metaphors from nature that lend his text a poetic quality. It is no wonder that the work inspired critics of the time to remark: “As a creative entity, as a symbol of the American spirit, it is superb” (Survey), and as “magically stirring as a prophecy” (Albert Guerard in Books).With its eloquent commentary and powerful renderings, The Metropolis of Tomorrow is an indispensable resource for students, architects, and anyone else with an interest in American architecture.

    Using a vintage panoramic camera tilted ninety degrees. Hamann spent nearly five years painstakingly setting up shot after shot, often finding himself balancing precariously out a window ledge, patiently waiting for the perfect lighting conditions. His stark black and white compositions lend these photographs a dramatic, often dreamlike quality, and offer unique reinterpretations of the of the world's most recognizable cityscapes. The result is an original and astonishing array of images -- accompanied by quotations from some of the city's most ardent and well-known fans-that capture New York's towering presence in a way no other photographer ever has.

    The Dolls, peddling trans-gender posturing and incendiary rock 'n' roll, were dumped by the record business after making just two albums. But their influence lives on...

    Shawn's New Yorker, Mr. Mehta gives us the closest, most careful, and most refined description that has yet been written of Shawn's editorship of the magazine. He portrays in detail the peculiar, nurturing atmosphere at the New Yorker. And he recounts the series of tremors that shook the magazine in the last years of Shawn's editorship and ended in his dismissal by the magazine's new owners. This memoir is at once a tribute to William Shawn, a close look at the relationship between writer and editor, and a joyful homage to the inextricably linked arts of editing, writing, and reading.

    delicatessen, a group of Brooklyn natives gets together to discuss basketball, boxing, the weather back east, and the Jewish gangsters of yesteryear. Meyer Lansky. Bugsy Siegel. Louis Lepke, the self-effacing mastermind of Murder, Inc. Red Levine, the Orthodox hit man who refused to kill on the Sabbath. Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, who looked like a mama's boy but once buried a rival alive. These are just some of the vibrant, vicious characters Rich Cohen's father reminisced about and the author evokes so pungently in Tough Jews.Tracing a generation of Jewish gangsters from the candy stores of Brownsville to the clubhouses of the Lower East Side--and, occasionally, to suites at the Waldorf--Cohen creates a densely anecdotal and gruesomely funny history of muscle, moxie, and money. Filled with fixers and schlammers, the squeal of tires and the rattle of gunfire, his book shatters stereotypes as deftly as its subjects once shattered kneecaps.

    A single entity in childhood, they remain so when they move to frenzied downtown Manhattan and become part of a decadent demi-monde moving to the heartbeat of music and drugs, fashion, and celebrity. Then on New Year's Eve 1989, Flip opens The Breeders Box, the defining nightclub of the tail-end of a decade of fast living and reckless glamour. Their tightly knit world will change forever.

    One day, he used it to write. Soon, writing became a habit that won out over drugs. And soon, Lee Stringer had created one of the most powerful urban memoirs of our time. With humane wisdom and a biting wit, Lee Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive, and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York City. Whether he is portraying "God's corner," as he calls 42nd Street, or his friend Suzi, a hooker and "past-due tourist" whose infant he sometimes baby-sits; whether he recounts taking shelter underneath Grand Central by night and collecting cans by day, or making a living hawking Street News on the subway, Lee Stringer conveys the vitality and complexity of a down-and-out life. Rich with small acts of kindness, humor, and even heroism amid violence and desperation, Grand Central Winter offers a touching portrait of our shared humanity.

    Jerre Mangione's autobiographical chronicle of his youth in a Sicilian community in Rochester is one of the truly enduring books about the immigrant experience in this country. Family squabbles, soul-nourishing food, and the casting of evil eyes are only some of the ingredients of this richly textured book, although they must all take second place to its unforgettable characters. As Eugene Paul Nassar writes in the book's Foreword, Mount Allegro . . . gave a literary visibility and identity, amiable and appealing, to a poorly understood ethnic group in America, and did so at a very high level of artistry.

    Everyone who was anybody in nineteenth century New York wanted to be buried there, and they were. As The New York Times succinctly put in it 1866, "It is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the (Central) Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood." One hundred and sixty years after its establishment, Green-Wood Cemetery is one of the world's great cemeteries. This is its story and the best stories of its almost 600,000 permanent residents.

    Despite its distinguished record and key role in the war, no detailed history of the brigade has been written in 130 years. Made up largely of New York Irishmen, the Brigade made a decisive contribution to the Union victory at Antietam, suffered fearfully in a gallant charge at Fredericksburg, and made a famous stand in the Wheatfield on the second day at Gettysburg, as depicted in the recent film. The full co-operation of the present-day 69th New York National Guard helped make possible the compilation of this detailed account, which includes 13 period maps and 270 illustrations, many of them rare photos from private collections. The original hardcover limited edition of Bilby's book quickly sold out to re-enactors, veteran and active members of the 69th Regiment, and hard-core Civil War collectors; the Combined Publishing trade paperback is the first edition made available directly to the general public. Joseph G. Bilby is a popular columnist for the Civil War News and a veteran of the current 69th Regiment. He is also the author of Civil War Firearms.

    "A gripping expose" (Publishers Weekly) of the conditions faced by Chinese illegal aliens in the United States.

    S. Trow parsed television's overwhelming dominance over America's consciousness. In My Pilgrim's Progress, he returns with a provocative tour of politics and the media to show "how 1950 got to be 1998." The son of a tabloid journalist, Trow was raised in the "Deepest Roosevelt Aesthetic," and found himself seduced by the ordinaryness of the Eisenhower era. It was a time when the Old World was giving way to the New. Perusing The New York Times of February 1950, he gives us America at the peak of its power, with its politicians and celebrities (and the nearly hesitant advent of television) and the fresh terror of the H-bomb. At turns a cultural history, a eulogy, and a provocative commentary on contemporary America, My Pilgrim's Progress confirms Trow's place as one of our most brilliant and incisive social critics.

    Max's quickly became the place to be in the nexus of underground life where art, sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Superstars ignited a cultural conflagration that will never be extinguished. Everyone who was anyone was there (and many Anybodies were there before they became Somebodies): Mick Jagger, Faye Dunaway, Larry Rivers, Jim Morrison, Julie Christie, Richard Avedon, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, Robert Mapplethorpe, John Waters, Halston, Bianca Jagger, Philip Glass, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Fran Lebowitz, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Tuesday Weld, Twiggy, Frank Zappa, Peter Max, Joan Baez, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Velvet Underground - and the list goes on and on. High on Rebellion celebrates Max's with over 200 never-before-published black-and-white photographs of face after famous face, you-could-have-been-there-profiles, memorabilia, and hundreds of personal reminiscences and testimonials: Together these make for a tribute to a place that was like no other, where the creative chemistry of thousands of artists, film-makers, musicians, writers, poets, photographers, models, movie stars, and socialites combusted into the longest-running party in history - and a crucible for the culture and history of an era.

    Extensive, detailed captions document location, architects, opening date, other data for the Fifth Avenue Theatre (1873), the Hippodrome (1905), the Music Box Theatre (1921), as well as the New Amsterdam, Winter Garden, Ziegfeld, more. Over 200 photos and illustrations.

    The high plateau that forms Morningside Heights is geographically isolated within the city and remained largely undeveloped even as neighboring Harlem and the Upper West Side became prestigious residential communities. At the end of the nineteenth century, institutions relocated to the plateau where sizable plots were available at a convenient distance from the built-up city. In 1887 Episcopal Bishop Henry Potter announced plans for the construction of a great cathedral at the edge of the plateau. The cathedral was soon followed by Columbia College and St. Luke's Hospital, which contemplated grand complexes, and by newer institutions such as Barnard College and Teachers College that were intent on establishing a presence in the rapidly growing city. Thus, Morningside Heights became indelibly associated with New York's educational, medical, and religious foundations, and was appropriately dubbed "the Acropolis of New York."In this extensively illustrated book, Andrew S. Dolkart explores the architecturally varied complexes built by these organizations. He traces the successes and failures of each building project, as trustees and supporters struggled to raise funds in order to construct great campuses in a city where residents were not always generous in their support of such endeavors. Commissioning designs from some of city's and the nation's leading architects, the Morningside Heights institutions created a richly diverse ensemble of buildings.The book tells the stories of the excitement surrounding the initial plans for an Episcopal cathedral and the ultimate failure of this grandiose project; the efforts of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to build a rival nondenominational church (Riverside Church); the development of Charles McKim's inspired designs for Columbia's campus; the efforts of Barnard and Teachers College to build impressive campuses adjacent to Columbia; and the later projects of Union and Jewish theological seminaries and the Institute of Musical Art (late the Julliard School) to erect buildings that would be part of the larger institutional concentration, but world provide each with a unique architectural identity.Dolkart also traces the history of the surrounding residential neighborhood, providing the first comprehensive analysis of the design and construction the early-twentieth-century speculative apartment houses that typify so many New York neighborhoods. Based on extensive research and incorporating more than 200 photographs, Morningside Heights will appeal to anyone interested in architecture, urban development, or the history of New York City, as well as those associated with the neighborhood or its institutions.

    Jerry E. Patterson explores the avenue from its beginning, journeying uptown from Greenwich Village to Harlem and highlighting such famous landmarks along the way as the Washington Square Arch, the Flatiron Building, the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Rockefeller Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Patterson's tour of Fifth Avenue is not limited to famous points of interest, but explores the avenue's colorful history as well. The lore surrounding the lives and achievements of notable Manhattanites - from the descendants of the island's earliest Dutch settlers to such luminous American figures as Stanford White, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton - vividly imbues Fifth Avenue: The Best Address.

    The pieces in O Solo Homo touch nerves that run deep — from sex, politics, community, and health to the struggles and joys of family, friends, and lovers. Peggy Shaw, of Split Britches, revisits how she learned to be butch. The late Ron Vawter, of the Wooster Group, juxtaposes the lives of two very different men who died of AIDS: diva filmmaker Jack Smith and Nixon crony Roy Cohn. Tim Miller, one of the NEA Four, surveys the landscape of gay desire before and after the advent of AIDS. And Carmelita Tropicana, the “National Songbird of Cuba,” makes an unforgettable, hilarious return to Havana.

    In the Elmhurst-Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York City, the transition occurred during the 1970s, and the area's two-decade experience of multiracial diversity offers us an early look at the future of urban America. The result of more than a dozen years' work, this remarkable book immerses us in Elmhurst-Corona's social and political life from the 1960s through the 1990s.First settled in 1652, Elmhurst-Corona by 1960 housed a mix of Germans, Irish, Italians, and other "white ethnics." In 1990 this population made up less than a fifth of its residents; Latin American and Asian immigrants and African Americans comprised the majority. The Future of Us All focuses on the combined impact of racial change, immigrant settlement, governmental decentralization, and assaults on local quality of life which stemmed from the city's 1975 fiscal crisis and the policies of its last three mayors. The book examines the ways in which residents--in everyday interactions, block and tenant associations, houses of worship, small business coalitions, civic rituals, incidents of ethnic and racial hostility, and political struggles against overdevelopment, for more schools, and for youth programs--have forged and tested alliances across lines of race, ethnicity, and language.From the telling local details of daily life to the larger economic and regional frameworks, this account of a neighborhood's transformation illuminates the issues that American communities will be grappling with in the coming decades.

    Rarely seen are those buried in their wake—those who fought the power, pushing for a better world. In Radical Walking Tours of New York Bruce Kayton leads us to monuments of those other heroes. Through Kayton’s lens, the history of all hitherto existing neighborhoods is the history of class struggles, civil rights battles, and labor movements; these twelve tours provide as many exciting, provocative, and educational afternoons. You can visit, for instance, Emma Goldman’s long-time home in the East Village, Langston Hughes’s house in Harlem, the site of Mabel Dodge’s salon o the apartment in which John Reed worked on Ten Days That Shook the World, and the site of Margaret Sanger’s first birth control clinic. From Battery Park to Harlem, from the Lower East Side to Central Park, Bruce Kayton’s tours provide a new perspective on the history of both New York City and American radicalism.

    As with the place itself, there are surprising rewards to getting lost here.”—New Yorker “Detail[s] in charming and highly accessible form the facts about a city that works..”—William R. Everdell, New York Times Book Review “Strikingly illustrated, well written, and with clear maps, this is an excellent guide to the visual delights and the human landscape of our most complex borough.”—Howard Kissel, Daily News“A delightful tour.”—Digby Diehl, Modern Maturity“New York’s most populous borough comes alive in The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn. . . . With photographs, maps, and fact-crammed descriptions of each neighborhood, this guide is a lively salute to Brooklyn. For the millions who have lived or now live in New York, and for the millions of others who long to, these books will be an essential and endlessly fascinating resource. . . . The most detailed and sparkling celebration of Brooklyn ever written.”— Brooklyn Park Slope Courier  A joint publication of Citizens for NYC and Yale University Press