Best of
New-York

2006

Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City


Will Eisner - 2006
    Henry." - Neil Gaiman With an unparalleled eye for stories and expressive illustration, Will Eisner, the master and pioneer of American comics art, presents graphic fiction's greatest celebration of the Big Apple. No illustrator evoked the melancholy duskiness of New York City as expressively as Eisner, who knew the city from the bottom up. This new hardcover presents a quartet of graphic works (New York, The Building, City People Notebook, and Invisible People) and features what Neil Gaiman describes as "tales as brutal, as uncaring as the city itself." From ancient buildings "barnacled with laughter and stained with tears" to the subways, "humorless iron reptiles, clacking stupidly on a webbing of graceful steel rails," Will Eisner's New York includes cameo appearances by the author himself; several new illustrations sketched by Eisner, posthumously inked by Peter Poplaski; and three previously unpublished "out-takes" - treasure for any Eisner fan, and sure to become a collectible. Introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters


Lesley M.M. Blume - 2006
    She surrounds herself with dictionaries and other books to isolate herself from the outside world. But when a glamorous neighbor named Virginia Somerset moves next door with her servant Patel and a mischievous French bulldog named Mister Kinyatta, Cornelia discovers that the world is a much more exciting place than she had originally thought.An unforgettable story of friendship and adventure that takes readers around the world and back again, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters is a dazzling first novel by Lesley M. M. Blume.

Girls from Da Hood


Nikki Turner - 2006
    She never completely understood that the money was for a rainy day. Then the heavens opened...

Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005


Alice Notley - 2006
    This chronological selection of her most notable work offers a delineation of her life and creative development. Formerly associated with the second generation of the New York School, Notley has become a poet with a completely distinctive voice. Grave of Light is a progression of changing forms and styles - an extensive panorama held together explicitly by the shape of the poet's times. Notley's poems challenge their subjects head-on, suffusing language with radiant truth.

Pleasure Seekers


Rochelle Alers - 2006
    Now all three women are caught in the whirlwind of the super rich and famous. They find themselves the objects of the desires of every man--from movie stars, politicians, CEOs and rock stars to European royalty--men for whom there are no limits, nothing is too expensive, nothing is forbidden.From Manhattan to Paris to Southampton, their new worlds are a torrent of sensual delights and unlimited luxuries. But ultimately they realize that there's only one thing more satisfying than money and power...love.

Elizabeth Street


Laurie Fabiano - 2006
    At the heart of the novel is Giovanna, whose family is targeted by the notorious Black Hand--the precursor to the Mafia. Elizabeth Street brings to light a period in history when Italian immigrant neighborhoods lived in fear of Black Hand extortion and violence--a reality that defies the romanticized depiction of the Mafia. Here, the author reveals the merciless terror of the Black Hand-and the impact their crimes had on her family. Giovanna is based on Fabiano's great-grandmother, and the book's heroes and villains - such as Lieutenant Petrosino, the crusading cop and "Lupo the Wolf," a cold-blooded criminal - are drawn from real life in this thrilling tale. While set in a dynamic historical context, Elizabeth Street is, above all, the dramatic story of the heroine, Giovanna, and how she triumphed over tragedy.

Forgotten New York: Views of a Lost Metropolis


Kevin Walsh - 2006
    Forgotten New York covers all five boroughs with easy-to-use maps and suggested routes to hundreds of out-of-the way places, antiquated monuments, streets to nowhere, and buildings from a time lost.Forgotten New York features:Quiet PlacesTruly ForgottenHistory Happened HereWhat Is This Thing?Forgotten PeopleAnd so much more

At the Mercy of the Mountains: True Stories of Survival and Tragedy in New York's Adirondacks


Peter Bronski - 2006
    In the tradition of Eiger Dreams, In the Zone: Epic Survival Stories from the Mountaineering World, and Not Without Peril, comes a new book that examines the thrills and perils of outdoor adventure in the “East’s greatest wilderness,” the Adirondacks.

New York Then and Now (Compact)


Marcia Reiss - 2006
    Today, it is America's densest urban environment and most vital city, boasting one of the most recognizable skylines in the world.• New York Then and Now places today's post 9/11 cityscape within the context of history, reflecting the changing and enduring aspects of life in the Big Apple.• Remarkable past-and-present photographs showcase Manhattan's development and the amazing architecture that defines the city. See side-by-side images of the lavish Waldorf-Astoria, Radio City Music Hall, Union Square, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Penn Station, Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building.• The Twin Towers, part of the World Trade Center, redefined the Manhattan skyline when they opened in 1976. After the tragedies of 9/11, the skyline is defined as much by their absence.• New York continues to be one of the most popular destinations in the world-everyone who has experienced the energy and magic of the Big Apple will want this compact edition of New York Then and Now. It's the perfect souvenir or gift!

Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History


Stephen Christopher Quinn - 2006
    Its dioramas-a dazzling mixture of nature, science, and art-have inspired young and old alike, and are world-renowned examples of the unique diorama craft: art in the service of science. Now, in the only book of its kind, readers get an insider's view of these "windows on nature," witnessing their creation step by meticulous step.More than forty of the museum's finest dioramas are featured here, depicting the fauna and flora of myriad ecological environments. Stephen Quinn, a diorama artist at the museum, introduces the explorers, naturalists, painters, sculptors, taxidermists, and conservationists behind these three-dimensional marvels, and explains how their collaborations make the displays so lifelike. This enchanting book is the perfect gift for nature lovers, art enthusiasts, and museum goers everywhere.

Aftermath


Joel Meyerowitz - 2006
    In his own words, he was 'overcome by a deep impulse to help, to save, to soothe, but, being far away, there was nothing I could do. On his return, Meyerowitz soon made his way to the scene where, upon raising his camera, he was reminded by a police officer that this was a crime scene and that no photographs were allowed. Meyerowitz duly left the scene but within a few blocks the officer's reminder had turned into consciousness. To Meyerowitz, 'no photographs meant no history' and he decided at that moment to find a way in and make an archive for the City of New York. Within days, he had established strong links with many of the firefighters, policemen and construction workers contributing to the clean up. With their assistance he became the only photographer to be granted unimpeded access to Ground Zero. necessary demolition, excavation and removal of tens of thousands of tonnes of debris that would transform the site from one of total devastation to level ground. Soon after, the Museum of the City of New York officially engaged Meyerowitz to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero. The 9/11 Photographic Archive numbers in excess of 5,000 images and will become part of the permanent collections of the Museum of the City of New York. Meyerowitz takes a meditative stance toward the work and workers at Ground Zero, methodically recording the painful work of rescue, recovery, demolition and excavation. His pictures succinctly convey the magnitude of the destruction and loss and the heroic nature of the response. The images included here are a combination of prints from a large format camera, which allows for the greater detail, and standard 35mm, a format which provided Meyerowitz with the freedom to move easily around the site and capture each moment as it happened. destruction of the 9/11 attacks and the physical and human dimensions of the recovery effort. The aim of this book is to provide record of the extraordinary extent of the World Trade Center attacks and to documents the recovery efforts. The book will serve as both a poignant elegy to those that lost their lives and as a celebration of the tireless determination of those left behind to reclaim and rebuild the area known as 'Ground Zero'. Twenty eight of the images in from the archive were displayed in New York and then in over fifty cities around the world in a travelling exhibition entitled After September 11: Images from Ground Zero.

A Hearth in Candlewood


Delia Parr - 2006
    She finds her purpose in caring for her guests, ministering to them with a generous dose of wisdom and humor. But when a "runaway grandma" lands on her doorstep, Emma's need to fix every wrong places her in the midst of a family feud.Emma's concerns heighten when her attorney, Zachary Breckenwith, delivers life-changing news, leaving Emma reeling from the implications. With her future suddenly uncertain, Emma longs to restore the peace of Hill House--for her guests and within her own heart.FIND A WELCOME RETREAT IN CANDLEWOOD AS YOU EXPERIENCE THE BEAUTY, FRIENDSHIP, AND FAITH IN THE LIVES OF ITS QUAINT AND COLORFUL CHARACTERS.

Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992


Brandon Stosuy - 2006
    Sometime after Andy Warhol's heyday but before Soho became a tourist trap, a group of poets, punk rockers, guerilla journalists, graffiti artists, writers, and activists transformed lower Manhattan into an artistic scene so diverse it became known simply as "Downtown." Willfully unpolished and subversively intelligent, figures such as Spalding Gray, Kathy Acker, Richard Hell, David Wojnarowicz, Lynne Tillman, Miguel Pi�ero, and Eric Bogosian broke free from mainstream publishing to produce a flood of fiction, poetry, experimental theater, art, and music that breathed the life of the street.The first book to capture the spontaneity of the Downtown literary scene, Up Is Up, But So Is Down collects more than 125 images and over 80 texts that encompass the most vital work produced between 1974 and 1992. Reflecting the unconventional genres that marked this period, the book includes flyers, zines, newsprint weeklies, book covers, and photographs of people and the city, many of them here made available to readers outside the scene for the first time. The book's striking and quirky design--complete with 2-color interior--brings each of these unique documents and images to life.Brandon Stosuy arranges this hugely varied material chronologically to illustrate the dynamic views at play. He takes us from poetry readings in Alphabet City to happenings at Darinka, a Lower East Side apartment and performance space, to the St. Mark's Bookshop, unofficial crossroads of the counterculture, where home-printed copies of the latest zines were sold in Ziploc bags. Often attacking the bourgeois irony epitomized by the New Yorker's short fiction, Downtown writers played ebulliently with form and content, sex and language, producing work that depicted the underbelly of real life.With an afterword by Downtown icons Dennis Cooper and Eileen Myles, Up Is Up, But So Is Down gathers almost twenty years of New York City's smartest and most explosive--as well as hard to find--writing, providing an indispensable archive of one of the most exciting artistic scenes in U.S. history.

The Tattoo Artist


Jill Ciment - 2006
    She has not left Ta'un'uu–the South Seas island upon which she and her husband, Philip, were marooned during a storm–in more than thirty years. Sara doesn’t know that man has landed on the moon. She has never seen a ballpoint pen. Her body is covered, head to toe, in tattoos.Flashback: it’s 1918 and Sara, a shop girl and aspiring artist, meets Philip, a wealthy member of the avant-garde elite. The two fall in love, marry, and collaborate to make art, surrounded by socialites and revolutionaries–until the Depression cripples not just Sara and Philip, but most of their patrons. When Philip is offered a job gathering masks from the South Seas, they jump at a chance to escape America’s sorrows, traveling to Ta’un’uu for what they think will be a week’s stay. The rest is history–a history Sara records on her skin through the traditional tattoos that become her masterpiece and provide an accounting of her days. Narrated in vivid and starkly moving prose, The Tattoo Artist reminds us of the unforeseeable forces that shape each human life.

Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom


Stephen Wilkes - 2006
    Neglected for almost fifty years, the buildings were in a state of extreme disrepair: lead paint peeled from the ceilings and walls, vines and trees grew through the floorboards, detritus and debris littered the hallways. In rooms long-abandoned, Wilkes captured a spirited new vision of this gateway to freedom. Twelve million people passed through Ellis Island. Approximately one percent were turned away for health reasons. Wilkes's powerful images of the underbelly of the island--a purgatory between freedom and captivity--ask us to reflect on the defining experiences of millions. With that rare combination of an eye that sees far beyond the lens with the technical acumen of a master draftsman, Wilkes takes us on an unforgettable journey through our collective past.

The New York Stories of Henry James


Henry James - 2006
    Here Colm Tóibín, the author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City. Written over the course of James's career and ranging from the deliciously tart comedy of the early "An International Episode" to the surreal and haunted corridors of "The Jolly Corner," and including "Washington Square", the poignant novella considered by many (though not, as it happens, by the author himself) to be one of James's finest achievements, the nine fictions gathered here reflect James's varied talents and interests as well as the deep and abiding preoccupations of his imagination. And throughout the book, as Tóibín's fascinating introduction demonstrates, we see James struggling to make sense of a city in whose rapidly changing outlines he discerned both much that he remembered and held dear as well as everything about America and its future that he dreaded most.Stories included:The Story of a MasterpieceA Most Extraordinary CaseCrawford's ConsistencyAn International EpisodeThe Impressions of a CousinThe Jolly CornerWashington SquareCrapy CorneliaA Round of Visits

Astoria


Malena Mörling - 2006
    Surrounded by the rush and noise of trains, highways, and grocery store checkout lines, the narrator of these poems creates an intimate space in which to ponder the ephemeral nature of everyday things and the deeper meanings that might underlie them all. “It is amazing / we're not more amazed,” one poem muses, “The world / is here / and then it is gone.” The poems in Astoria unravel the hidden within the obvious, and speak to our innate questions of longing, purpose, and existence.

City Eclogue


Ed Roberson - 2006
    African American Studies. Ed Roberson might no longer live in Pittsburgh, but the city in which he was born and raised still leaves its fragmented structures etched throughout his poetry. A city of hard work and hard times, the now-impoverished neighborhoods that had at one time stood as centers of jazz and art; the hills, the rivers, the skyscraping iron and steel, and the pain. Though most of the poems in this collection do not necessarily take place in Pittsburgh, there is a rhythmic fragmentation here painting portraits of urban life in general. Beauty, music, poverty, blood, and concrete seem to live within the line breaks, while breath-stopping pauses halt you just long enough so that--like at a smoky backroom jazz club--you can't wait to see what he does next.

The Popular Girl


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 2006
    Yet no sooner have they met than her drunken father dies unexpectedly, leaving her impoverished. Too ashamed to admit to Scott her desperate state, she instead creates a fanciful world full of parties and holidays, friends and suitors, to convince him she is still the popular girl he first met. However, as her charade grows ever more fragile, she endangers their friendship and her very hope of salvation. Fitzgerald's beautifully drawn exploration of the interdependency of love and money captures in perfect detail the concerns that pervade so many of his stories.

The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera


Joseph Volpe - 2006
    This book is the story of Volpe's years leading up to those at the Met, from his first job as a stagehand at the Morosco Theater to the odd jobs he picked up moonlighting: setting up a searchlight or laying down a red carpet for a movie premiere, changing titles on the marquees at the Astor, Victor, and Paramount theaters. It is his Met years--from apprentice carpenter to general manager--that give us a story about New York and the business of culture. Volpe looks at the Met today, an institution full of vast egos and complicated politics, as well as its glittering past--the old Met at Thirty-ninth and Broadway, and the political and artistic intrigues that exploded around its move to Lincoln Center. With stunning candor, he writes about the general managers he worked under, including Rudolf Bing and Anthony Bliss; his own embattled rise to the top; the maneuverings of the blue-chip board; his bad-cop, good-cop collaboration with the conductor James Levine; and his masterful approach to making a family of such highly charged artist-stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, and Renee Fleming, and such visionary directors as Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Wilson, and Julie Taymor.

Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow


Kristen Breitweiser - 2006
    Then, on the morning of September 11th, 2001, the phone rang. It was her husband, Ron, calling from his office in the second tower. "Sweets, I'm ok. I'm ok. Don't worry. It's not my building," he said. Kristen didn't know what he was saying. He told her to turn on the television. He continued. "I see them. They're right there. Right across from me. And they're jumping. My God, they're jumping." The call ended abruptly and Kristen watched with horror as the second tower exploded. A huge, brilliant, red fireball. In that frozen instant, she felt in her heart that he had been killed. This is the deeply personal, often shocking and ultimately inspirational story of a woman left to pick up the pieces of a life shattered by terrorism. With no husband by her side or father for her child, Kristen had to find the strength within herself to embark on a journey that would lead first to the creation of the 9/11 Commission and then to her role as one of the country's most outspoken activists and critics of the current administration.

Nine Months at Ground Zero: The Story of the Brotherhood of Workers Who Took on a Job Like No Other


Glenn Stout - 2006
    They knew their skills would be crucial amid the chaos and destruction after the towers fell. What they could not imagine -- and what they would soon discover -- was the enormity of the task at Ground Zero. Four hundred million pounds of steel; 600,000 square feet of broken glass; and 2,700 vertical feet of building had been reduced to a pile of burning debris covering sixteen acres. Charlie, Bobby, and hundreds of other construction workers, many of whom had helped to build the Twin Towers, were the only ones qualified to safely handle the devastation.Everyone working the site faced the looming danger of the collapse of the slurry wall protecting lower Manhattan from the waters of the Hudson River, the complexity of shifting tons of steel without losing additional lives, and the day-to-day challenge and emotional strain of recovering victims. Charlie Vitchers became the go-to guy for the hundreds of people and numerous agencies laboring to clean up Ground Zero. What he and Bobby Gray make dramatically evident is how the job of dismantling the remaining ruins and restoring order to the site was far more complex and dangerous than constructing the tallest buildings in the world.With stunning full-color photographs donated by Joel Meyerowitz -- a celebrated and award-winning artist and the only non-newsroom photographer allowed access to the site -- and first-person oral accounts of the tragedy from the morning of the attack to the Last Column ceremony, "Nine Months at Ground Zero" is aharrowing but ultimately redemptive story of forthright and heroic service.

The Best Things to Do in New York City: 1001 Ideas


Caitlin Leffel - 2006
    A wide-ranging guide to visiting and living in New York City is a theme-organized reference that profiles cultural centers, eateries, architecture, and more, in an insider's tribute that covers everything from the nation's first pizzeria and Woody Allen's clarinet performances at the Carlyle to City Hall's abandoned subway station and the Staten Is

Building with Earth: Design and Technology of a Sustainable Architecture


Gernot Minke - 2006
    In hot dry and temperate climate zones, earth offers numerous advantages over other materials. Its particular texture and composition also holds great aesthetic appeal. The second and revised edition of this handbook offers a practical systematic overview of the many uses of earth and techniques for processing it. Its properties and physical characteristics are described in informed and knowledgeable detail.The authora (TM)s presentation reflects the rich and varied experiences gained over thirty years of building earth structures all over the world. Numerous photographs of construction sites and drawings show the concrete execution of earth architecture.

New York: 365 Days


The New York Times - 2006
    Beginning with New Year's Day, the reader takes a fascinating and evocative journey through the New York Year, stopping at such calendrical landmarks as the opening of the baseball season, the Fourth of July, the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, illustrated with compelling then and now photographs that capture the changing look of the city. We see New Yorkers sunbathing in Central Park in the summer and hurrying through snowy Times Square in the winter; gathering in restaurants and clubs; meditating in the city's great museums; and enjoying quiet moments on fire escapes and park benches.

The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty


Jean Zimmerman - 2006
    She promptly built an empire of trading ships, furs, and real estate that included all of Westchester County. The Dutch called such women "she-merchants," and Margaret became the wealthiest in the colony, while raising five children and keeping a spotless linen closet. Zimmerman deftly traces the astonishing rise of Margaret and the Philipse women who followed her, who would transform Margaret’s storehouse on the banks of the Hudson into a veritable mansion, Philipse Manor Hall. The last Philipse to live there, Mary Philipse Morris—the It-girl of mid-1700s New York—was even courted by George Washington. But privilege couldn’t shelter the family from the Revolution, which raged on Mary’s doorstep. Mining extensive primary sources, Zimmerman brings us into the parlors, bedrooms, countinghouses, and parties of early colonial America and vividly restores a forgotten group of women to life.

George Gershwin: His Life and Work


Howard Pollack - 2006
    Gershwin created some of the most beloved music of the twentieth century and, along with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, helped make the golden age of Broadway golden. Howard Pollack draws from a wealth of sketches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, books, articles, recordings, films, and other materials—including a large cache of Gershwin scores discovered in a Warner Brothers warehouse in 1982—to create an expansive chronicle of Gershwin’s meteoric rise to fame. He also traces Gershwin’s powerful presence that, even today, extends from Broadway, jazz clubs, and film scores to symphony halls and opera houses.Pollack’s lively narrative describes Gershwin’s family, childhood, and education; his early career as a pianist; his friendships and romantic life; his relation to various musical trends; his writings on music; his working methods; and his tragic death at the age of 38. Unlike Kern, Berlin, and Porter, who mostly worked within the confines of Broadway and Hollywood, Gershwin actively sought to cross the boundaries between high and low, and wrote works that crossed over into a realm where art music, jazz, and Broadway met and merged. The author surveys Gershwin’s entire oeuvre, from his first surviving compositions to the melodies that his brother and principal collaborator, Ira Gershwin, lyricized after his death. Pollack concludes with an exploration of the performances and critical reception of Gershwin's music over the years, from his time to ours.

Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in New York 1966-2006


James Sanders - 2006
    Beginning with a survey of such classics as Breakfast at Tiffany's, Scenes from the City captures how the changing face of New York, as well as the founding of the MOFTB, have contributed to a particular school of film characterized most emphatically in the street-style work of directors as diverse as Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee. With over 200 stills and contributions from noted New York film personalities such as Sidney Lumet and Nora Ephron, the book also includes rare, unpublished, behind-the-scenes shots and stories from the quintessential New York filmmaker himself--Woody Allen. With a special section on the landmark TV series, commercials and music videos filmed in New York, Scenes from the City is an affectionate and vivacious ovation for this captivating -character- that rarely receives billing but always steals the show.

New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium


Robert A.M. Stern - 2006
    As the world's financial and cultural capital, New York demands the best in architectural design and balances the constant pressure to build with the need to preserve its historic fabric. Author Robert A. M. Stern and his colleagues trace the rise and fall of the real estate market, the impact of the designation of historic districts and new zoning on development, and the emergence of new commercial and residential centers. The survey is organized geographically, moving north from Lower Manhattan and covering the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island as well. New York 2000 documents milestones in the city's architectural history over the past forty years—the development of Battery Park City, the rebirth of Harlem and Times Square, the creation of the cultural precinct around the new MoMA, and the reclaiming of the waterfront along the East and Hudson Rivers as recreational parkland—and celebrates the achievements of internationally recognized architects such as Sir Norman Foster, Cesar Pelli, Richard Meier, and Renzo Piano.

Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11


David Friend - 2006
    'Watching the World Change' is an altogether fresh look at 9/11 through the photographs and the photographers who brought the disaster home to us.

Edie Factory Girl


David Dalton - 2006
    Like many exotic creatures that Andy Warhol shed his light on, she initially bloomed, became the symbol for all that was hip and style, and just as quickly began to disintegrate.

Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945


Elizabeth Alice Clement - 2006
    Comparing prostitution and courtship with a new working-class practice of heterosexual barter called "treating," Elizabeth Alice Clement examines changes in sexual morality and sexual and economic practices.Women "treated" when they exchanged sexual favors for dinner and an evening's entertainment or, more tangibly, for stockings, shoes, and other material goods. These "charity girls" created for themselves a moral space between prostitution and courtship that preserved both sexual barter and respectability. Although treating, as a clearly articulated language and identity, began to disappear after the 1920s and 1930s, Clement argues that it still had significant, lasting effects on modern sexual norms. She demonstrates how treating shaped courtship and dating practices, the prevalence and meaning of premarital sex, and America's developing commercial sex industry. Even further, her study illuminates the ways in which sexuality and morality interact and contribute to our understanding of the broader social categories of race, gender, and class.

Richard Estes


John Wilmerding - 2006
    This new large-format book will cover fifty-five years of Estes's work, from 1950 to 2005, and will include paintings, watercolors, and preparatory sketches. Estes is regarded as one of the most important painters of the New York urban landscape. The crisp clarity of Estes's paintings is reminiscent of photography, yet upon closer inspection his work reveals elements and perspectives that do not exist in reality and have more to do with minimalism and realism than with traditional landscape painting. The book will also include his work of the last ten years, much of which will be published here for the first time. A detailed chronology and list of exhibitions and public collections are included.

Street Play


Martha Cooper - 2006
    Working out of her car, she drove around the city's five boroughs from assignment to assignment, always on the lookout for interesting feature shots. Cooper quickly found that the city's poorer neighborhoods had the richest street life and her favorite location became Manhattan's Alphabet City--north of Houston Street between Avenues A and D--as she would habitually wind through Manhattan's Lower East Side on her way back to the Post at the end of the day. In Street Play, Cooper takes us through the Alphabet City of the late 70s, when this area was undergoing extensive urban renewal--a process that is still continuing today. At the time, the neighborhood had more than its share of drug dealers and petty criminals, and the landscape often seemed ugly and forbidding. But to the children who grew up there, the abandoned buildings and rubble-strewn lots made perfect playgrounds, providing raw materials and open space for improvised play. A crumbling tenement housed a secret clubhouse, rooftops became private aviaries, and a pile of trash might be a source for treasure. Street Play shows the creative and indomitable spirit of city kids determined to make the best of their inhospitable environment. Today the neighborhood is transformed, although the days of go-carts and skelly caps can still be found down certain streets between new developments and parks. Martha Cooper's work attests to a transitional, post-tenement and preartist period on the Lower East Side when this street culture was not pushed to the fringes of this already out-of-the-way neighborhood, but held turf in Alphabet City.

Emma Lazarus


Esther Schor - 2006
    She was a woman so far ahead of her time that we are still scrambling to catch up with her–a feminist, a Zionist, and an internationally famous Jewish American writer before thse categories even existed.Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity. Born into a wealthy Sephardic family in 1849, Lazarus published her first volume of verse at seventeen and gained entrée into New York’s elite literary circles. Although she once referred to her family as “outlaw” Jews, she felt a deep attachment to Jewish history and peoplehood. Her compassion for the downtrodden Jews of Eastern Europe–refugees whose lives had little in common with her own–helped redefine the meaning of America itself. In this groundbreaking biography, Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus’s place in history as a poet, an activist, and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today–a world that she helped to invent.

The Greatest Game Ever Played


Phil Bildner - 2006
    He convinces his skeptical Pop to come with him to the Game, and as Johnny Unitas engineers Baltimore’s legendary comeback, Sam and Pop rediscover the joy of rooting on their heroes together.

Life on the Lower East Side: Photographs by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1937-1950


Peter E. Dans - 2006
    Smith housing project largely demolished and forever changed its character. She captured the lives and times of a vibrant, close-knit, and functional multiethnic community. Through her lens, she documented street scenesa woman stopping in front of a tenement to share some news, a fruit seller peddling her wares, a woman hanging laundry on a clothesline. Stoops, rooftops, fire escapes, and sidewalks in front of candy stores and delis were the preferred social and recreational locales. In the absence of playgrounds, children improvised outdoor play areas and congregated Saturday afternoons in front of the Loew's Canal.Life on the Lower East Side, the first monograph of Lepkoff's works, highlights the lost neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges from the Bowery to the East River. With over 170 beautifully reproduced duotone photographs and essays by Peter Dans and Suzanne Wasserman, the book reveals the dynamic community of Italians, Irish, Jews, Greeks, Spaniards, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. Lepkoff's images uncover a forgotten time and place and reveal how the Lower East Side has both stayed the same and changed forever.

Carrere & Hastings Architects


Mark A. Hewitt - 2006
    For five decades, this architectural firm endeavored to provide the city they loved with classically beautiful buildings worthy of a world capital. CARRERE & HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS is the first complete examination and visual record of this firm s exceptional achievements. Volume I features detailed biographies and a history of the firm, along with a thorough record of their urban designs: commercial and civic structures, urbane parks, and distinguished town houses. Volume II concentrates on their country house and landscape work, a field in which they had no peer, as well as their achievements as designers of churches, academic, and institutional buildings, and festive exhibition pavilions for world s fairs. Illustrated with more than 800 duotone photographs, including 7 gatefolds plates, the set includes a catalog of Carr??re & Hastings projects, a roster of the firm s members, and a comprehensive bibliography.

In Search of Willie Morris: The Mercurial Life of a Legendary Writer and Editor


Larry L. King - 2006
    His time at the head of Harper's magazine, where he was made editor at age thirty-two, is legendary. With writers like David Halberstam, Norman Mailer, and author of this book, Larry L. King, Harper's became the magazine to read and the place to be in print.Morris was friend, colleague, or mentor to a remarkable cast of writers— William Styron, James Jones, Truman Capote, George Plimpton, Gay Talese, and later in life, Barry Hannah, Donna Tartt, John Grisham, and Winston Groom. In Search of Willie Morris is a wise, sometimes raucous, and moving look at Morris that conveys the energy and activity of the years at the top and the troubles, talents, late rallies, and mysteries of his later life. Written with the affection of a close friend and the critical insight of a fellow writer, it is an absorbing biography of an extraordinarily gifted literary man and raconteur who inspired both wonder and frustration, and who left behind a legacy and a body of work that endures.

Uncover a Crocodile


Paul Beck - 2006
    Kids who are crazy for crocs can explore the inner workings of these remarkable reptiles with an awesome 3-D layered model of a crocodile. Each spread is full of awesome factoids, croc trivia, cool illustrations, and diagrams that will delight curious kids. It’s the safest way to get up close and personal with a crocodile!

Five Flights Up and Other New York Apartment Stories


Toni Schlesinger - 2006
    For the past eight years writer Toni Schlesinger has been bringing us these "conversation places" in her weekly column in the Village Voice. Through her incisive questioning, original writing, and comic parallel reveries, Schlesinger creates miniature documentaries on the lives, passions, hopes, and heartbreaks of many of New York City's millions.Five Flights Up chronicles people living in New York's extremes, occupying 150-square-foot spaces, paying over half their income for rent, living eight in an apartment, and taking showers in twos to save time. These are people who make movies in their living room and then sleep in it later. They surround themselves with their baby teeth, with 500 volumes of Moby Dick, plaster rabbis, birds' nests, 30 modernist chairs, 50 loaves of Wonder Bread, and more. In Schlesinger's hands,their stories are much more than novelties.Artists, actors, dancers, librarians, social workers, bus boys, bankers, porn stars, au pairs, urban planners, bakers, shamans, masseuses, web designers, and students come alive when they discuss where they came from and where they're going. Each interview is a vivid and insightful portrait, revealing the creative energy, camaraderie, desperation, and hope that fuel the daily lives of people in New York and everywhere.