Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed


Stephen O'Connor - 2001
    For years the city had been sweeping these children into prisons or almshouses, but in 1853 the young minister Charles Loring Brace proposed a radical solution to the problem by creating the Children's Aid Society, an organization that fought to provide homeless children with shelter, education, and, for many, a new family in the country. Combining a biography of Brace with firsthand accounts of orphans, Stephen O'Connor here tells of the orphan trains that, between 1854 and 1929, spirited away some 250,000 destitute children to rural homes in every one of the forty-eight contiguous states.A powerful blend of history, biography, and adventure, Orphans Trains remains the definitive work on this little-known episode in American history.

The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure


Tristan Taormino - 2012
    This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world's most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the debates of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women's movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and other minorities produce power and pleasure.Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, sex educator, and feminist pornographer. She is the author of seven books including The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and Opening Up. She runs the adult film production company Smart Ass Productions and is an exclusive director for Vivid Entertainment.Celine Parreñas Shimizu is an associate professor of film and performance studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and founding editor of Camera Obscura. She is the author of Straitjacket Sexualities and the 2009 Cultural Studies Book Award winning, The Hypersexuality of Race.Mireille Miller-Young is assistant professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her forthcoming book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work, and Pornography (Duke University Press) examines African American women’s sex work in the porn industry.

LAPD '53


James Ellroy - 2015
    While combing the museum’s photo archives, Ellroy discovered that the year featured a wide array of stark and unusual imagery—and he has written 25,000 words that illuminate the crimes and law enforcement of the era. Ellroy offers context and layers on wild and rich atmosphere—this is the cauldron that was police work in the city of the tarnished angels more than six decades ago. More than 80 duotone photos are spread throughout the book in the manner of hard-edged police evidence.

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem


Jillian Lauren - 2010
    The casting director told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next eighteen months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei, leaving behind her gritty East Village apartment for a palace with rugs laced with gold and trading her band of artist friends for a coterie of backstabbing beauties.More than just a sexy read set in an exotic land, Some Girls is also the story of how a rebellious teen found herself-and the courage to meet her birth mother and eventually adopt a baby boy.

The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop


Steve Osborne - 2015
    Steve Osborne is the real deal, people: the tough, streetwise New York cop of your dreams, one with a big, big heart. Kojak? NYPD Blue? Law & Order? Fuggedaboudem! The Job blows them out of the water.     Steve Osborne has seen a thing or two in his years in the NYPD—some harmless, some definitely not. In “Stakeout,” Steve and his partner mistake a Manhattan dentist for an armed robbery suspect, and reduce the man to a puddle of snot and tears when questioning him. In “Mug Shot,” the mother of a suspected criminal makes a strange request and provides a sobering reminder of the humanity at stake in his profession. And in “Home,” the image of Steve’s family provides the adrenaline he needs to fight for his life when assaulted by two armed and violent crackheads.      From stories about his days as a rookie cop to the time spent patrolling in the Anti-Crime Unit—and his visceral, harrowing recollections of working during the weeks after 9/11—The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop captures the humanity, the absurdity, and the dark humor of police work, as well as the bravery of those who do it. These stories will speak to those nostalgic for the New York City of the 1980s and ’90s, a bygone era when the city was a crazier, more dangerous (and possibly more interesting) place.

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better


William H. Patterson Jr. - 2014
    

Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers during World War II


John Strausbaugh - 2018
     New York City during World War II wasn't just a place of servicemen, politicians, heroes, G.I. Joes and Rosie the Riveters, but also of quislings and saboteurs; of Nazi, Fascist, and Communist sympathizers; of war protesters and conscientious objectors; of gangsters and hookers and profiteers; of latchkey kids and bobby-soxers, poets and painters, atomic scientists and atomic spies. While the war launched and leveled nations, spurred economic growth, and saw the rise and fall of global Fascism, New York City would eventually emerge as the new capital of the world. From the Gilded Age to VJ-Day, an array of fascinating New Yorkers rose to fame, from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes to Joe Louis, to Robert Moses and Joe DiMaggio. In Victory City, John Strausbaugh returns to tell the story of New York City's war years with the same richness, depth, and nuance he brought to his previous books, City of Sedition and The Village, providing readers with a groundbreaking new look into the greatest city on earth during the most transformative -- and costliest -- war in human history.

Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love


Thomas Maier - 2009
    This critically acclaimed biography offers an unprecedented look at William Masters and Virginia Johnson, their pioneering studies on intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of today's men and women.

Nurses On The Inside: Stories Of The HIV/AIDS Epidemic In NYC


Ellen Matzer - 2019
    It is the story of two nurses who witnessed the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic from the frontline. It focuses on their lives and their experiences. Some of the story is raw, sometimes graphic, but familiar for people with HIV infection, family members, friends, and other nurses and medical professionals such as Ellen and Valery. There were hundreds of nurses who went through what Ellen and Valery experienced. They want to tell this story to give a voice to a generation lost, encouraging the world to remember one simple thing: this history cannot be repeated.

Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women and Notes on Media


Nora Ephron - 1978
    In these sharp, hilariously entertaining, and vividly observed pieces, Ephron illuminates an era with wicked honesty and insight. From the famous “A Few Words About Breasts” to important pieces on her time working for the New York Post and Gourmet Magazine, these essays show Ephron at her very best.

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government


David K. Johnson - 2004
    But while the famous question, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" resonated in the halls of Congress, security officials were posing another question at least as frequently, if more discreetly: "Information has come to the attention of the Civil Service Commission that you are a homosexual. What comment do you care to make?"Historian David K. Johnson here relates the frightening, untold story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a "Lavender Scare" more vehement and long-lasting than McCarthy's Red Scare. Relying on newly declassified documents, years of research in the records of the National Archives and the FBI, and interviews with former civil servants, Johnson recreates the vibrant gay subculture that flourished in New Deal-era Washington and takes us inside the security interrogation rooms where thousands of Americans were questioned about their sex lives. The homosexual purges ended promising careers, ruined lives, and pushed many to suicide. But, as Johnson also shows, the purges brought victims together to protest their treatment, helping launch a new civil rights struggle.The Lavender Scare shatters the myth that homosexuality has only recently become a national political issue, changing the way we think about both the McCarthy era and the origins of the gay rights movement. And perhaps just as importantly, this book is a cautionary tale, reminding us of how acts taken by the government in the name of "national security" during the Cold War resulted in the infringement of the civil liberties of thousands of Americans.

How the Bible was Built


Charles Merrill Smith - 2005
    But very few people could say just how its seemingly disparate jumble of writings — stories, letters, poems, collections of laws, religious visions — got there. Filling this knowledge gap, How the Bible Was Built clearly tells the story of how the Bible came to be. Penned by Charles Merrill Smith in response to his teenage granddaughter’s questions, the manuscript was discovered after Smith’s death and has been reworked by his friend James Bennett for a wider audience. Free of theological or sectarian slant, this little volume provides a concise, factual overview of the Bible’s construction throughout history, outlining how its various books were written and collected and later canonized and translated. Written in an easy conversational style and enhanced by two helpful appendixes (of biblical terms and dates), How the Bible Was Built will give a more informed understanding of the Bible to people of virtually any reading level and any religious persuasion. Did you know?The word “Bible” comes from biblion, a Greek word meaning “papyrus scroll.”It took several thousand years to construct the Bible.The book we call Deuteronomy was discovered hidden away in a dark corner during the reconstruction of the temple under King Josiah.The Apocrypha contains some of the earliest “detective” stories on record.Church councils had many disagreements about which books ought to be authoritative (a book called the Shepherd of Hermas almost made the cut; the book of Revelation almost didn’t).A heretic helped form the canon.Debate over the canon didn’t really end until the Protestant Reformation and the use of the printing press.

Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street


Sheelah Kolhatkar - 2017
    Cohen changed Wall Street. He and his fellow pioneers of the hedge fund industry didn't lay railroads, build factories, or invent new technologies. Rather, they made their billions through speculation, by placing bets in the market that turned out to be right more often than wrong and for this, they gained not only extreme personal wealth but formidable influence throughout society. Hedge funds now oversee more than $3 trillion in assets, and the competition between them is so fierce that traders will do whatever they can to get an edge.Cohen was one of the industry's biggest success stories, the person everyone else in the business wanted to be. Born into a middle-class family on Long Island, he longed from an early age to be a star on Wall Street. He mastered poker in high school, went off to Wharton, and in 1992 launched the hedge fund SAC Capital, which he built into a $15 billion empire, almost entirely on the basis of his wizard like stock trading. He cultivated an air of mystery, reclusiveness, and excess, building a 35,000-square-foot mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, flying to work by helicopter, and amassing one of the largest private art collections in the world. On Wall Street, Cohen was revered as a genius: one of the greatest traders who ever lived.That image was shattered when SAC Capital became the target of a sprawling, seven-year investigation, led by a determined group of FBI agents, prosecutors, and SEC enforcement attorneys. Labeled by prosecutors as a magnet for market cheaters whose culture encouraged the relentless pursuit of edge and even black edge, which is inside information SAC Capital was ultimately indicted and pleaded guilty to charges of securities and wire fraud in connection with a vast insider trading scheme, even as Cohen himself was never charged.Black Edge offers a revelatory look at the gray zone in which so much of Wall Street functions. It's a riveting, true-life legal thriller that takes readers inside the government's pursuit of Cohen and his employees, and raises urgent and troubling questions about the power and wealth of those who sit at the pinnacle of modern Wall Street.

Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World


Susie Bright - 1988
    Cruising, packing, fisting, G-spots, porn stars, dildos, vibrators, anal sex, group sex, sex with straight girls, dental dams, lube 'n latex, sex during pregnancy, and more!

NYHC: New York Hardcore 1980-1990


Tony Rettman - 2014
    As bands of misfits from across the region gravitated to the forgotten frontier of Manhattan's Lower East Side. With a a backdrop of despair, bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Murphy's Law, and Youth of Today confronted their reality with relentlessly energetic gigs at CBGB, A7, and the numerous squats in the area.Tony Rettman's ambitious oral history captures ten years of struggling, including the scene's regional rivalries with D.C. and Boston, the birth of moshing, the clash and coming to terms of hardcore and heavy metal, the straightedge movement, and the unlikely influence of Krishna consciousness. With a foreword by Freddy Cricien of Madball, who made his stage debut with Agnostic Front at age seven, NYHC slams the sidewalk with savage tales of larger-than-life characters and unlikely feats of willpower. The gripping and sometimes hilarious narrative is woven together like the fabric of New York itself from over 100 original interviews with members of Absolution, Adrenalin O.D., Agnostic Front, Antidote, Bad Brains, Bloodclot, Bold, Born Against, Breakdown, Cause for Alarm, Citizen Arrest, Cro-Mags, Crumbsuckers, Death Before Dishonor, Even Worse, False Prophets, Don Fury, Gorilla Biscuits, H20, Heart Attack, Inhuman, Into Another, Irate, Judge, Kraut, Leeway, Life’s Blood, Major Conflict, Max’s Kansas City, Murphy’s Law, Nausea, Nihilistics, Nuclear Assault, Numskulls, Outburst, Pro-Pain, Quicksand, Rat Cage Records, Raw Deal, Reagan Youth, Rorschach, S.O.D., Sacrilege, Savage Circle, Sheer Terror, Shelter, Shok, Sick of it All, Side by Side, Skinhead Youth, Straight Ahead, the Abused, the Cryptcrashers, the Mad, the Misfits, the Misguided, the Mob, the Psychos, the Ritz, the Stimulators, the Undead, Token Entry, Underdog, Urban Waste, Virus, Warzone, Youth of Today, and many, many more.MOSH IT UP!