Best of
New-York

2004

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America


Russell Shorto - 2004
    But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records–recently declared a national treasure–are now being translated. Drawing on this remarkable archive, Russell Shorto has created a gripping narrative–a story of global sweep centered on a wilderness called Manhattan–that transforms our understanding of early America.The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.

Vice DOs & DON'Ts: 10 Years of Vice Magazine's Street Fashion Critiques


Suroosh Alvi - 2004
    From the creators of the runaway cult magazine sensation and arbiter of all that is cool comes the ultimate visual guide on how to be - and not to be - a modern urban hipster.

Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time


Frank Vlastnik - 2004
    Each listing includes expert commentary that sets the play in historical and cultural context, plus features on the creators and performers, plot synopses, cast and song lists, production details, backstage anecdotes, and more. Four or five beautifully reproduced photographs from each show--the majority never before published--accompany the text and make the shows leap off the page. Appendices and special features include cast albums, poster artists, revivals, guilty pleasures, Off-Broadway musicals, notable flops, and much more.

Downtown: My Manhattan


Pete Hamill - 2004
    From the Battery's traces of the early port to Washington Square's ghosts of executed convicts and well-heeled Knickerbockers; from the Five Points, once the most dangerous and squalid slum in America, to the mansions of the robber barons on "the Fifth Avenue"; from the Bowery of the 1860s, the vibrant heart of the city's theater world, to the Village of the 1960s, with its festival-like street life, this is downtown as we've never seen it before. Hamill weaves his own memories of Manhattan with the liveliest moments from its past, and points out the hints of that past living on in the city of today, fueling the ever-present nostalgia of its inhabitants.Hamill introduces us to the New Yorkers who have left indelible marks: Peter Stuyvesant and John Jacob Astor, Stanford White and George Templeton Strong, Edith Wharton and Henry James, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, W. H. Auden and Allen Ginsberg, Boss Tweed and Fiorello La Guardia, Jimi Hendrix and Thelonious Monk, and scores of others. And he takes us to the eateries, saloons, theaters, movie houses, bookstores, and street corners they, and he, once frequented, whether still standing or existing only in memory.Through the city's transformations, the pulse of Pete Hamill's brilliant voice melds with the pulse that drives New York, that mixture of daring, greed, anger, rebellion, hope, entrepreneurialism, and longing that never fades. Written by native son who has lived through some of New York City's most historic moments, Downtown is an extraordinary celebration of the magnificent, haunted place that Hamill continues to call home, and that people from all over the country and the world have come to call their own.

September Roses


Jeanette Winter - 2004
    As their plane approaches the airport, a cloud of black smoke billows over the Manhattan skyline. When they land, they learn of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. All flights are canceled; the sisters cannot go home, and they are stranded with boxes and boxes of roses. In the days that followed September 11, Jeanette Winter was drawn to Union Square and saw, among the hundreds of memorial offerings, twin towers made of roses. In the pages of this small and vibrant book, she tells a moving story.

The Last Clear Narrative


Rachel Zucker - 2004
    But this is no simple reportage. With candor, humor, and compassion, Zucker discovers a new poetic territory: a landscape between story and fragment, a way of telling that is neither confessional nor intellectually detached. At the cliff-edge of narrative, a high place where language is the rope and falling the perception, Zucker's poems are unsentimental, true to the disjunctive experiences of loving, giving birth, raising a child, being lonely, being alive. A poetry of the body, of desire, about human frailty and strength, The Last Clear Narrative fills a void in the history of women writing about everyday experience and speaks to the nature of narrative itself.

Many are Called


Walker Evans - 2004
    While at work on this book, the two also conceived another less well-known but equally important book project entitled Many Are Called. This three-year photographic study of subway passengers made with a hidden camera was first published in 1966, with an introduction written by Agee in 1940. Long out of print, Many Are Called is now being reissued with a new foreword and afterword and with exquisitely reproduced images from newly prepared digital scans.Many Are Called came to fruition at a slow pace. In 1938, Walker Evans began surreptitiously photographing people on the New York City subway. With his camera hidden in his coat—the lens peeking through a buttonhole—he captured the faces of riders hurtling through the dark tunnels, wrapped in their own private thoughts. By 1940-41, Evans had made over six hundred photographs and had begun to edit the series. The book remained unpublished until 1966 when The Museum of Modern Art mounted an exhibition of Evans’s subway portraits.This beautiful new edition—published in the centenary year of the NYC subway—is an essential book for all admirers of Evans’s unparalleled photographs, Agee’s elegant prose, and the great City of New York.

Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building


Deborah Hopkinson - 2004
    It s 1930 and times are tough for Pop and his son. But look! On the corner of 34th Street and 5th Avenue, a building straight and simple as a pencil is being built in record time. Hundreds of men are leveling, shoveling, hauling. They re hoisting 60,000 tons of steal, stacking 10 million bricks, eating lunch in the clouds. And when they cut ribbon and the crowds rush in, the boy and his father will be among the first to zoom up to the top of the tallest building in the world and see all of Manhattan spread at their feet."

Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York


Philip Otterness - 2004
    The so-called Palatine migration of 1709 began in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire, where perhaps as many as thirty thousand people left their homes, lured by rumors that Britain's Queen Anne would give them free passage overseas and land in America. They journeyed down the Rhine and eventually made their way to London, where they settled in refugee camps. The rumors of free passage and land proved false, but, in an attempt to clear the camps, the British government finally agreed to send about three thousand of the immigrants to New York in exchange for several years of labor. After their arrival, the Palatines refused to work as indentured servants and eventually settled in autonomous German communities near the Iroquois of central New York.Becoming German tracks the Palatines' travels from Germany to London to New York City and into the frontier areas of New York. Philip Otterness demonstrates that the Palatines cannot be viewed as a cohesive German group until after their arrival in America; indeed, they came from dozens of distinct principalities in the Holy Roman Empire. It was only in refusing to assimilate to British colonial culture--instead maintaining separate German-speaking communities and mixing on friendly terms with Native American neighbors--that the Palatines became German in America.

MoMA Highlights: 350 Works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York


Sarah Lucas - 2004
    Few institutions approach the richness of The Museum of Modern Art's holdings in painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, illustrated books, architectural models and drawings, graphic and industrial design, photography, film, video and multimedia installations. In this volume, some 350 highlights--23 of which are new to this edition--from the Museum's six curatorial departments, are interwoven to present a sumptuous and broadly chronological overview that takes readers from Post-Impressionism to contemporary art. Every work that was executed in color is reproduced in "MoMA Highlights" in vibrant hues, and each is accompanied by a brief commentary. Updated and revised, this book is the definitive guide to the broad scope of MoMA's collection. Also updated and expanded, The Museum of Modern Art recently reopened on November 20, 2004 in its newly designed building by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. Founded in 1929 as an educational institution, MoMA is dedicated to being the foremost museum of modern art in the world. The ultimate purpose of the Museum declared at its founding, is to acquire the best modern works of art in all visual mediums.

High Steel: The Daring Men Who Built the World's Greatest Skyline


Jim Rasenberger - 2004
    These "cowboys of the skies," as one journalist called them, were the structural ironworkers who walked steel beams -- no wider, often, than the face of a hardcover book -- hundreds of feet above ground, to raise the soaring towers and vaulting bridges that so abruptly transformed America in the twentieth century.Many early ironworkers were former sailors, new Americans of Irish and Scandinavian descent accustomed to climbing tall ships' masts and schooled in the arts of rigging. Others came from a small Mohawk Indian reservation on the banks of the St. Lawrence River or from a constellation of seaside towns in Newfoundland. What all had in common were fortitude, courage, and a short life expectancy. "We do not die," went an early ironworkers' motto. "We are killed."High Steel is the stirring epic of these men and of the icons they built -- and are building still. Shifting between past and present, Jim Rasenberger travels back to the earliest iron bridges and buildings of the nineteenth century; to the triumph of the Brooklyn Bridge and the 1907 tragedy of the Quebec Bridge, where seventy-five ironworkers, including thirty-three Mohawks, lost their lives in an instant; through New York's skyscraper boom of the late 1920s, when ironworkers were hailed as "industrial age heroes." All the while, Rasenberger documents the lives of several contempor-ary ironworkers raising steel on a twenty-first-century skyscraper, the Time Warner building in New York City.This is a fast-paced, bare-knuckled portrait of vivid personalities, containing episodes of startling violence (as when ironworkers dynamited the Los Angeles Times building in 1910) and exhilarating adventure. In the end, High Steel is also a moving account of brotherhood and family. Many of those working in the trade today descend from multigenerational dynasties of ironworkers. As they walk steel, they follow in the footsteps of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers.We've all had the experience of looking at a par-ticularly awe-inspiring bridge or building and wondering, How did they do that? Jim Rasenberger asks -- and answers -- the question behind the question: What sort of person would willingly scale such heights, take such chances, face such danger? The result is a depiction of the American working class as it has seldom appeared in literature: strong, proud, autonomous, enduring, and utterly compelling.

Uncover a Shark (An Uncover It Book)


David George Gordon - 2004
    Uncover a Shark takes you on a whole new learning experience, layer-by-layer to provide children with an indepth and all encompassing understanding of the subject and its anatomy. Great Whites are one of the most feared and studied mammals of all time. This 16-page book examines the alluring Great White in detail. First the basic elements--their cartilaginous nature, teeth, fins, and gills--then more complex systems are detailed--the cardiopulmonary systems, digestive system, and the acute sensory systems. Each organ or system is intricately placed inside the book to provide a three dimensional view of its size in relation to the rest of the body. Each page is filled with interesting facts and detailed illustrations that desctibe each part.Did you know that engineers study sharks in order to design better ships and rockets since the sharks body is well-suited to gliding through the water? Or that a great white can also eat 10 tons of meat a year but often go several days in between meals. Explore these questions and many others as Uncover a Shark takes you on a jouney you won't forget!

Pull Me Up: A Memoir


Dan Barry - 2004
    A New York Times columnist documents the story of his life, which has been marked by his mother's childhood in Ireland, his early achievements as a New England reporter, and his struggles with a life-threatening illness.

Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food: An Opinionated History and More Than 100 Legendary Recipes


Arthur Schwartz - 2004
    He knows his knish from his kasha, his bok choy from his bruschetta, his falafel from his frittata. And in "Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food, he shares his gastronomic expertise, chronicling the city's culinary history from its Dutch colonial start (think crullers and coleslaw) to its current status as the multicultural food capital of the world. For good measure, Schwartz also includes 160 recipes for American classics that either originated or were perfected in New York: Manhattan Clam Chowder, Eggs Benedict, Lindy's cheesecake, Lobster Newburg. Schwartz is not only informed, he's funny, and throughout the book he covers everything from the phenomenon of the celebrity chef to his first meeting with James Beard. His text is transporting, taking readers back to Delmonico's, the Colony, the Horn & Hardart Automats, and the once-popular Childs Restaurant with its renowned buttery pancakes. Whether revealing how an obscure dish known as Omelet Surprise was transformed into the decidedly chichi dessert Baked Alaska; investigating why some Jewish restaurants came to be known as Roumanian steakhouses; or instructing readers on the way to bake a molten chocolate minicake worthy of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Schwartz is the ideal dining companion.

Here Today


Ann M. Martin - 2004
    Bosetti's supermarket, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the Dingmans began to fall apart." So begins 11-yr-old Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman's story. Ellie, who is about to start 6th grade in the small town of Spectacle, NY, is the oldest child in her off-center family. Her father works construction jobs, while her mother, Doris, has only one dream - to become a rich and famous actress. But when that dream leads to Doris's abandonment of the family, it is Ellie who is called upon to take charge.

Angel of Harlem


Kuwana Haulsey - 2004
    May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.A gifted, beautiful young woman in the 1920s, May Edward Chinn dreams only of music. For years she accompanies the famed singer Paul Robeson. However, a racist professor ends her hopes of becoming a concert pianist. But from one dashed dream blooms another: May would become a doctor instead–-the first black female physician in all of New York.Giddy with the wonder of the Harlem Renaissance and fueled by firebrand friends like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, May doggedly pursues her ambitions while striving to overcome the pains of her past: the death of a fiancé, a lost child, and a distant father ravished by the legacy of slavery. With every grief she encounters, a resilient piece of herself locks into place. At times risking her life–attending to men stabbed in their homes and women left to die in filthy alleys–May struggles to carve out a place for herself within a medical world that still teaches that a “Negro” brain is not anatomically wired for higher thinking. Yet against the odds, she achieves her goal, starts her own practice, and becomes one of the first cancer specialists in the city.Alive with the pulse of black unrest in 1920s New York, this beautifully textured novel moves with fearlessness and grace through a history that is by turns ugly and sublime. With Angel of Harlem, critically acclaimed author Kuwana Haulsey gives poetic voice to the story of a remarkable woman who had the courage to dream and live beyond her era’s limitations.From the Hardcover edition.

The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair


Bill Cotter - 2004
    Guests could travel back in time through a display of full-sized dinosaurs, or look into a future where underwater hotels and flying cars were commonplace. They could enjoy Walt Disney's popular shows, or study actual spacecraft flown in orbit. More than fifty-one million guests visited the fair before it closed forever in 1965. The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair captures the history of this event through vintage photographs, published here for the first time.

Hard News: Twenty-one Brutal Months at The New York Times and How They Changed the American Media


Seth Mnookin - 2004
    The fallout from the Blair scandal rocked the Times to its core and revealed fault lines in a fractious newsroom that was already close to open revolt. Staffers were furious–about the perception that management had given Blair more leeway because he was black, about the special treatment of favored correspondents, and most of all about the shoddy reporting that was infecting the most revered newspaper in the world. Within a month, Howell Raines, the imperious executive editor who had taken office less than a week before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001–and helped lead the paper to a record six Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the attacks–had been forced out of his job.Having gained unprecedented access to the reporters who conducted the Times’s internal investigation, top newsroom executives, and dozens of Times editors, former Newsweek senior writer Seth Mnookin lets us read all about it–the story behind the biggest journalistic scam of our era and the profound implications of the scandal for the rapidly changing world of American journalism. It’s a true tale that reads like Greek drama, with the most revered of American institutions attempting to overcome the crippling effects of a leader’s blinding narcissism and a low-level reporter’s sociopathic deceptions. Hard News will shape how we understand and judge the media for years to come.From the Hardcover edition.

Just the Thing: Selected Letters


James Schuyler - 2004
    . . the perfect companion to his brilliant and memorable poems.”—Paul Auster

Frommer's NYC Free & Dirt Cheap


Ethan Wolff - 2004
    Perfect for residents and visitors alike, this outspoken guide is packed with free and dirt-cheap ways to get the most out of New York City, from food, drinks, and entertainment to shopping, events, classes, and more.

Twenty-One Elephants


Phil Bildner - 2004
     Believe the unbelievable and dream the impossible because Hannah, the little girl with big dreams, is coming your way. Come and see for yourself her bold acts of bravery, her courageous conviction as she proves to the world that the Brooklyn Bridge is safe to cross. But she can't do it alone. P. T. Barnum and his parade of twenty-one elephants provide a spectacular show that will save the day! Impossible, you say? Then you'll have to look inside. You won't want to miss this, the greatest show on earth.

New York Changing: Revisiting Berenice Abbott's New York


Douglas Levere - 2004
    The result was the landmark publication Changing New York, a milestone in the history of photography that stands as an indispensable record of the Depression-era city.More than sixty years later, New York is an even denser city of steel-and-glass and restless energy. Guided by Abbott's voice and vision, New York photographer Douglas Levere has revisited the sites of 100 of Abbott's photographs, meticulously duplicating her compositions with exacting detail; each shot is taken at the same time of day, at the same time of year, and with the same type of camera. New York Changing pairs Levere's and Abbott's images, resulting in a remarkable commentary on the evolution of a metropolis known for constantly reinventing itself.

Gutterboys


Alvin Orloff - 2004
    Jeremy, a shy 19-year-old, falls madly in love with Colin, a disturbed yet well-read older hustler. Though Colin rejects Jeremy as a lover, he takes him on as a protégé, introducing him to the hilariously depraved world of new wave nightclubs and gay bars in the days before AIDS and the war on drugs. Innocent Jeremy, protected by the guardian spirits of his beloved dead grandmothers - one a fiery Jewish socialist, the other a proper British matron - becomes increasingly unstable under the strain of his unanswered devotion. When Jeremy finally snaps, he reaches an understanding with Colin that he never anticipated.

Here and There


Helen Levitt - 2004
     Here and There is Levitt’s new collection of personally-selected images a charming monograph featuring over ninety never-before-published photographs, including portraits of her friends James Agee and Walker Evans. The recently discovered photographs featured in Here and There represent Levitt’s own favorite images selected from her immense private collection. Shot over seven decades, Here and There reveals Levitt’s acute sense of how cosmetically street life has changed—and how substantially it has remained the same. The sheer determination of this inimitable photographer to walk the streets of her beloved city for this length of time and take pictures of what she saw, reaffirms her unofficial status as New York City’s visual poet laureate. “[Levitt’s photographs] have the quality of frozen street-corner conversation: she went out, saw something wonderful, came home to tell you all about it, and then, frustrated, said, ‘You had to be there,’ and you realize, looking at the picture, that you were.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

On This Spot: An Expedition Back Through Time


Susan E. Goodman - 2004
    See buildings soar and traffic zoom, a kaleidoscope of color and movement. Now turn the page and time-travel back 175 years, where on the same spot carriages bumped and pigs raced across cobblestones. Turn again and go back 400 years to when a Lenape Indian trail crossed the spot. Now travel farther still, to when glaciers crept . . . dinosaurs preyed . . . a tropical sea teemed with ancient creatures . . . back 540 million years, when rock was all you could see.What happened on this spot? What will happen next? Look out your window. What happened on that spot?

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: On the Way to The Gates, Central Park, New York City


Jonathan Fineberg - 2004
    Their installations often feature fabric—sometimes wrapped around existing structures or used to create large-scale temporary environments. Some of their most influential projects include Running Fence inSonoma and Marin Counties, California, Surrounded Islands inMiami, the Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris,the Wrapped Reichstag inBerlin, and The Umbrellas simultaneouslyin Japan and California. Now New York City, where they have lived and worked for forty years, will be the site for a much-anticipated Christo and Jeanne-Claude project. The Gates willconsist of saffron-colored fabric panels suspended from the horizontal tops of over 7,500 sixteen-foot-tall vinyl gates, positioned at regular intervals throughout 23 miles of walkways of Central Park. The installation will be on view for sixteen days, beginning February 12, 2005 (weather permitting). This book, published in conjunction with a major exhibition that opens in April 2004 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, celebrates the culmination of the artists’ vision for The Gates, a project that began in 1979. It includes an illustrated introduction by Jonathan Fineberg that surveys the career of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and assesses their contribution to contemporary art and culture. The heart of the book consists of beautiful reproductions of the various preparatory collages and drawings that Christo has created for The Gates project, many of which have not been previously published, and detailed documentation of the personalities and events that have led up to the project. This volume also features four highly engaging, unpublished interviews conducted by Fineberg with the artists, from the 1970s to a recent interview in July 2003.

Glass House


Margaret Morton - 2004
    Why these titles? Why so many photographs of the places where the homeless gather to find shelter?From the beginning, my work was devoted not to despair but rather to the courage and imagination with which people face adversity, the ways they manage to build makeshift structures and find warmth and community. I try to show that the term homeless is a misnomer that blinds us from seeing how people preserve their sense of home and identity while struggling for survival at the margins of society.How does Glass House fit into your earlier work?Unlike my other books, which are about adults, Glass House focuses upon a group of young people--some were runaways--who in 1993 established a communal home in an abandoned glass factory on Manhattan's Lower East Side.How did you find out about Glass House and get access to the community?I learned about Glass House from a homeless man whom I had photographed. He introduced me to Gentle Spike, one of the members of the community, who told me to meet him at Avenue D and East 10th Street on a Sunday night at 9 pm. If no one is there, he said, just yell 'Glass House.' When I arrived at the seven-story building that next Sunday, it was completely dark and looked deserted. I waited a few minutes, then yelled Glass House. Silence. I yelled again. Suddenly, a thick chain came hurtling down. I had the keys. I found my way to the second floor and a dimly lit, unheated room where about thirty-five people between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two were conducting what they called a house meeting. A stranger, a documentarian, was on the agenda. I showed them a copy of my first book, Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives. Discussion, a show of hands, then a woman slammed a sledgehammer on a table: I had been given permission to take photographs and conduct interviews as they continued their lives in this derelict brick building. After that night and for the next four months, I attended Thursday workdays, Sunday night house meetings, and met with individual residents.Why do you think they accepted you?These young men and women in Glass House had had many adults--teachers, parents, police--try to impose codes of behavior on them that they considered cruel or irrational or just too restrictive. I think that from the first they understood I would not judge them by society's norms of conduct. I accepted them as they were. Then, too, I believe the people in Glass House wanted to tell their stories, to present their experiences to a society they thought had been unwilling or unable to understand them. They decided they could trust me to record their way of life.Glass House seems to have been a tightly regulated community, indeed, seems to have been better organized than most communities and institutions on the outside. How did they go about keeping order?They took turns doing essential duties, built what was needed with what they could find, and took care of one another. Each and every one was required to respect house rules, which were strict and detailed, covering almost every eventuality from overnight guests to police raids. Here, for instance, is the guest policy: You can't stay at Glass House unless you are the guest of a member. If you are the guest of a member, you can only sleep in his or her room. Glass House is not a crash pad. You can't sleep in the community room or in any other part of the house. All guests must attend Sunday night meetings, so we know your face. Any strangers will be escorted to the door.You photographed Glass House from 1993 to 1994. Why did you wait so long to publish the material as a book?Four months after I began my work, the police stormed the building and evicted everyone. I put aside my photographs, transcripts, and notes and turned to other projects. Then, a few years ago, a letter from one of the Glass House survivors prompted me to trace all the other former residents. I was saddened to learn that five of them had died, and impressed that many others had dramatically changed their lives. One now lives in a eucalyptus forest on Maui; another is an organic gardener in Costa Rica; yet another is preparing for law school. But all I contacted told me that their months in Glass House had been a turning point in their lives. Also it seems right to present this chronicle of young squatters at a time when gentrification is erasing virtually all traces of the ethnic groups and radical fringe that once gave Alphabet City such great diversity and vitality.

The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park


Jerry C. Jenkins - 2004
    Generously illustrated-complete with 450 full-color maps and 250 figures, graphs, tables, charts, and scientific drawings-this volume covers 130 topics on the six-million-acre Adirondack Park. As the first book of its kind, it is both a work of art and an authoritative reference.The Park has a complex history. It is one of the only parks in the world to combine large wilderness areas with extensive private lands and a substantial residential population. Jerry Jenkins explores this connection between the wild and human communities within a protected landscape. As he maps out the diverse and ever-changing environment--the recreational growth, conflicts between users, development, pollution, and climate change--he highlights elements that threaten to alter the Park and undo the protection it now enjoys.Jenkins includes old stories of fur routes and battles, log drives and Shea engines; new stories about school taxes and education, conservation easements and local economies, artistic ferment and social ills, about healthy towns, dying trees, and deer harvests. As a comprehensive and standard resource, the Atlas captures the full scope of the park's topographic, hydrographic, and ecological history for a wide audience of geographers, historians, and Adirondack enthusiasts.

Orchidelirium


Deborah Landau - 2004
    Winner of the 2003 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. "You'll find a stunning cleanliness of movement and image in these delicious, evocative, sexy poems. Hooray for a writer who can weave presence and absence, longing and loss of longing, into a tapestry of language as rich, honest, and compelling as this"--Naomi Shihab Nye. "With depth, assurance, and astonishing savoir faire Landau makes ORCHIDELIRIUM a genuine orchid of a book, a vivid and riveting new bloom in American letters"--Molly Peacock.

The City Beneath Us: Building the New York Subway


New York City Transit Museum - 2004
    Made from 8 x 10-inch glass negatives after the turn of the last century, and reproduced here in glorious duotone, over 175 images show the incredible construction techniques and details involved in creating the underground marvel we enjoy today. From "cut and cover" and deep tunneling to sinking under-river tubes and disastrous cave-ins, these photographs are nothing short of awe-inspiring. The book is accompanied by an engaging, illustrated history of the subway system. Published in honor of the New York City subway's centennial, The City Beneath Us will fascinate anyone who's ever been amazed by the gigantic undertaking that is New York City transportation. 175 duotone and 40 black-and-white photographs.

The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang


David C. Brotherton - 2004
    This book chronicles the astounding self-transformation of one of the most feared gangs in the United States into a social movement acting on behalf of the dispossessed, renouncing violence and the underground economy, and requiring school attendance for membership.What caused the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation of New York City to make this remarkable transformation? And why has it not happened to other gangs elsewhere? David C. Brotherton and Luis Barrios were given unprecedented access to new and never-before-published material by and about the Latin Kings and Queens, including the group's handbook, letters written by members, poems, rap songs, and prayers. In addition, they interviewed more than one hundred gang members, including such leaders as King Tone and King Hector. Featuring numerous photographs by award-winning photojournalist Steve Hart, the book explains the symbolic significance for the gang of hand gestures, attire, rituals, and rites of passage. Based on their inside information, the authors craft a unique portrait of the lives of the gang members and a ground-breaking study of their evolution.

Life Below: The New York City Subway


Christophe Agou - 2004
    Bridging the worlds of documentary and art photography, Life Below is a series of frozen moments, revealing fear, love, affection, stress and solitude.

Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York


Randy Kennedy - 2004
    1 train beneath the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001* Tips for the first-time traveler: how to get a seat, how to get a date, the fine art of "pre-walking"

The Statue of Liberty


Barry Moreno - 2004
    It documents the gift s taking symbolic form of the ancient goddess of liberty and its designation as the tallest metal statue in the world. Highlights include Liberty s construction history, her changing symbolism over the years, and her use in popular advertising and political activism. Her upraised arm has saluted scores of ships as they have passed by. Her dignity has welcomed Americans returning home from foreign parts and has given hope to newcomers seeking a fresh beginning in the land of liberty.

Meyer Berger's New York


Meyer Berger - 2004
    A reporter and columnist for The New York Times for thirty years, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for his account of the murder of thirteen people by a deranged war veteran in Camden, New Jersey.Berger is best known for his About New York column, which appeared regularly in the Times from 1939 to 1940 and from 1953 until his death in 1959. Through lovingly detailed snapshots of ordinary New Yorkers and far corners of the city, Berger's writing deeply influenced the next generation of writers, including Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe.Originally published in 1960 and long out of print, Meyer Berger's New York is a rich collection of extraordinary journalism, selected by Berger himself, which captures the buzz, bravado, and heartbreak of New York in the fifties in the words of the best-loved reporter of his time.Mike Berger was one of the great reporters of our day . . . he was a master of the color story, the descriptive narrative of sights and sounds-of a parade, an eclipse, a homicidal maniac running amok . . . or just a thunderstorm that broke a summer heat wave . . . .-The New York Times, obituary, February 6, 1959Dip into Meyer Berger's New York, at any point, and you will find things you never knew or dreamed of knowing. . . . It has a heart, a soul, and a beauty all its own.-Phillip Hamburger, The New York Times Book Review

Touring Gotham’s Archaeological Past: 8 Self-Guided Walking Tours through New York City


Diana diZerega Wall - 2004
    Generously illustrated and replete with maps, the tours are designed to explore both ancient times and modern space. On these tours, readers will see where archaeologists have discovered evidence of the earliest New Yorkers, the Native Americans who arrived at least 11,000 years ago. They will learn about thousand-year-old trading routes, sacred burial grounds, and seventeenth-century villages. They will also see sites that reveal details of the lives of colonial farmers and merchants, enslaved Africans, Revolutionary War soldiers, and nineteenth-century hotel keepers, grocers, and housewives. Some tours bring readers to popular tourist attractions (the Statue of Liberty and the Wall Street district, for example) and present them in a new light. Others center on places that even the most seasoned New Yorker has never seen—colonial houses, a working farm, out-of-the-way parks, and remote beaches—often providing beautiful and unexpected views from the city’s vast shoreline. A celebration of New York City’s past and its present, this unique book will intrigue everyone interested in the city and its history.

My Subway Ride


Paul DuBois Jacobs - 2004
    From the "pitch, smack, home run!" of Yankee Stadium, to the rattle of the Cyclone and the sticky cotton candy on Coney Island, to the pulse of the crowd in Times Square, this book immerses you in the movement of the city. The pulse and beat of the subway train runs throughout the text, and the colorful and bold illustrations give the graphic sense of the subway, from fading train lights, to mosaic tile walls, to colorful graffiti, to a sea of faces. Join the subway station musicians who sing of the train's sound and rhythm as "a pulse, the pulse/a heartbeat/ a jazz riff/ a constant sea/ a mama's belly/ whisking us home." BR>Paul DuBois Jacobs and Jennifer Swender are a husband-and-wife team living in Brooklyn, New York. Paul has coauthored three books with musician Pete Seeger: Pete Seeger's Storytelling Book, Abiyoyo Returns, and Some Friends to Feed: The Story of Stone Soup. Jennifer is an early childhood educator and curriculum developer. Paul and Jennifer's favorite subway line is the Q train. BR>Selina Alko lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband who is also an illustrator. Selina studied illustration in New York City at the School of Visual Arts. She has illustrated many educational books for children, including Show and Tell Rose (from McGraw Hill) and Jump Rope (from Bebop Books). Selina loves her daily commute on the subway. Her favorite line is also the Q train. BR>

A Perfect Stranger


Anne Robins - 2004
    She’s the toast of the Titanic, and the center of attention in its most elegant ballroom. The swells don’t have to know that she and her little daughter aren’t traveling in first class, and Isabel doesn’t care. Nothing can go wrong. They’re on their way to a new life in America! Then, amid the terrifying chaos before the great ship goes down, a gentleman–a perfect stranger–puts them into the last lifeboat. They owe their lives to him–but shell never know his name. IN HIS HEART Rescued by a quirk of fate, Somerset FitzRoy remembers little about his ordeal in the icy water. But he cannot forget the frightened child who begged him for help that night–and her mother’s beautiful face haunts his dreams. Days later, he is overjoyed to find Isabel and Eunice among the survivors in New York. Will she remember him? She must–because their love was meant to be.

Breaking Ground


Daniel Libeskind - 2004
     Drawing on his uncommon background and global perspective, in Breaking Ground Daniel Libeskind explores ideas about tragedy and hope, and the way in which architecture can memorialize-and reshape-human experience. Born in 1946 to Holocaust survivors in Poland, Daniel Libeskind eventually emigrated to New York City in 1959. A virtuoso musician before studying architecture, Libeskind has designed iconic buildings around the world, including the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England. In February 2003, Libeskind was chosen as the Master Plan Architect for the World Trade Center reconstruction. Full of the vitality, humor, and visionary spark that helped win him the Trade Center Commission, Breaking Ground invites readers to see architecture-and the larger world-through new perspectives.

Historic Houses of the Hudson River Valley


Gregory Long - 2004
    Overlooking the majestic Hudson River, the Hudson Valley has long been a favored place to live. From the homes of the early settlers of the seventeenth century to the estates of the landed gentry of the eighteenth century and the baronial mansions of the captains of industry of the nineteenth century, the valley boasts some of the finest houses in America. This book is a sumptuous presentation of thirty-three houses in the region, ranging from the earliest Dutch cottages still extant to the grand Gothic and Italianate revival, stately Georgian, Federal, and Beaux-Arts country homes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.