86 results for "History"

The Brooklyn nobody knows: an urban walking guide

Helmreich, William B.
Bill Helmreich walked every block of New York City—6,000 miles in all—to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows . Now he has re-walked Brooklyn—some 816 miles—to write this one-of-a-kind walking guide to the city's hottest borough. Drawing on hundreds of conversations he had with residents during his block-by-block journeys, The Brooklyn Nobody Knows captures the heart and soul of a diverse, booming, and constantly changing borough that defines cool around the world. The guide covers every one of Brooklyn’s forty-four neighborhoods, from Greenpoint to Coney Island, providing a colorful portrait of each section’s most interesting, unusual, and unknown people, places, and things. Along the way you will learn about a Greenpoint park devoted to plants and trees that produce materials used in industry; a hornsmith who practices his craft in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens; a collection of 1,140 stuffed animals hanging from a tree in Bergen Beach; a five-story Brownsville mural that depicts Zionist leader Theodor Herzl—and that was the brainchild of black teenagers; Brooklyn’s most private—yet public—beach in Manhattan Beach; and much, much more. An unforgettably vivid chronicle of today’s Brooklyn, the book can also be enjoyed without ever leaving home—but it’s almost guaranteed to inspire you to get out and explore one of the most fascinating urban areas anywhere. Covers every one of Brooklyn’s 44 neighborhoods, providing a colorful portrait of their most interesting, unusual, and unknown people, places, and things Each neighborhood section features a brief overview and history; a detailed, user-friendly map keyed to the text; and a lively guided walking tour Draws on the author’s 816-mile walk through every Brooklyn neighborhood Includes insights from conversations with hundreds of residents
Princeton University Press 2016-10-04 404 pages

The rising: the twenty-year battle to rebuild the World Trade Center

Silverstein, Larry
"The never-before-told inside story of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center - an epic tale of business, politics, and engineering by the man who spent two decades working to make it happen. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center, New Yorkers and Americans faced a critical set of questions: What should be done with the site? Could the towers be replaced? And how best to memorialize those lost on that day? For Larry Silverstein, a lifelong New Yorker who had signed a lease for the properties just a few months before the attacks, the answer was clear: America had to rebuild as quickly as possible. In The Rising, Silverstein recounts in vivid detail his long battle to construct a new World Trade Center complex and to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood while also memorializing the victims of the attacks. Silverstein made history in 2001 when he signed a 99-year lease on the 10.6 million square foot World Trade Center for $3.25 billion. For the next twenty years, he navigated warring political interests, byzantine city bureaucracies, and resistant insurance companies, as well as the many challenges of designing, engineering, and constructing several new towers in the heart of downtown Manhattan. More than once the entire project almost folded, but today the buildings are nearly complete and the neighborhood is once again a thriving hub that draws hundreds of thousands of people a day. The Rising is a vibrant portrait of the inner workings of New York City in the wake of its most profound tragedy, but it is also a master class in how to succeed in business despite all odds. Full of outsize characters and relentless adversity, this is a riveting book about a remarkable feat of vision and determination"--
Alfred A. Knopf 2024 359 pages

Typhoid Mary: captive to the public's health

Leavitt, Judith Walzer
Discover the forgotten story of Mary Mallon—the real Typhoid Mary—in this humanizing portrait offering a window into the ethical dilemmas of public health policy that continue to haunt us in the COVID era. She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected 22 New Yorkers with typhoid fever through her puddings and cakes; one of them died. Tracked down through epidemiological detective work, she was finally apprehended as she hid behind a barricade of trashcans. To protect the public's health, authorities isolated her on Manhattan’s North Brother Island, where she died some 30 years later. This book tells the remarkable story of Mary Mallon—the real Typhoid Mary. Combining social history with biography, historian Judith Leavitt re-creates early 20th-century New York City, a world of strict class divisions and prejudice against immigrants and women. Leavitt engages the reader with the excitement of the early days of microbiology and brings to life the conflicting perspectives of journalists, public health officials, the law, and Mary Mallon herself. Leavitt’s readable account illuminates dilemmas that continue to haunt us in the age of COVID-19. To what degree are we willing to sacrifice individual liberty to protect the public's health? How far should we go? For anyone who is concerned about the threats and quandaries posed by new epidemics, Typhoid Mary is a vivid reminder of the human side of disease and disease control.
Beacon Press 1996 331 pages

New York 2000: architecture and urbanism between the Bicentennial and the Millennium

Stern, Robert A. M.
"New York 2000 is the culmination of an award-winning series documenting the history of architecture and urbanism in New York City from the Civil War to the present. The previous books, New York 1880, New York 1900, New York 1930, and New York 1960, provide comprehensive coverage on the architects and urban planners who defined New York since the mid-nineteenth century. This volume chronicles milestones in the city's history over the past thirty years, with more than 1,800 color illustrations to complement the text." "Featuring insightful discussions on 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, New York 2000 documents ongoing commitments to innovation and renovation and celebrates the achievements of internationally recognized architects, including Sir Norman Foster, Cesar Pelli, Richard Meier, and Renzo Piano." "The survey of organized geographically, beginning in Lower Manhattan and moving north through Harlem and to the outer boroughs including the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Woven throughout is commentary on the repercussions of September 11, 2001, New York 2000 is a thorough study of how a world-class metropolis preserves, showcases, and constructs an architectural heritage that endures over the course of two centuries."--BOOK JACKET
Monacelli Press 2006-11-01 1520 pages

Mr. Met: how a sports-mad kid from Jersey became like family to generations of big leaguers

Horwitz, Jay
"Anyone who knows Jay Horwitz knows he loves stories and has a wealth of them to share. As the beloved, longtime PR director for the New York Mets, he has witnessed and quietly shaped some of the most memorable moments in team history, becoming a trusted friend and mentor to generations of players, from Darryl Strawberry to Jacob deGrom. In this fascinating memoir, Horwitz tells the unlikely story of a childhood dream come true, offering an unparalleled insider's perspective on four dynamic and unpredictable decades of Mets baseball. Featuring reflections and anecdotes only Horwitz can tell, on subjects ranging from clubhouse hijinks to the chaotic New York media scene to navigating moments of greatness and defeat, Mr. Met is a remarkable behind-the-scenes ride that fans will not want to miss"--
Triumph Books 2021-06-08 258 pages

When the Astors owned New York: blue bloods and grand hotels in a Gilded Age

Kaplan, Justin
This newest book by Pulitzer Prize winner Justin Kaplan is a sparkling combination of biography, social history, architectural appreciation, and pure pleasure Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, two heirs of arch-capitalist John Jacob Astor battled with each other for social primacy. William Waldorf Astor (born 1848) and his cousin John Jacob Astor IV (born 1864) led incomparably privileged lives in the blaze of public attention. Novelist, sportsman, and inventor, John Jacob went down with the Titanic , after turbulent marital adventures and service in the Spanish-American War. Collector of art, antiquities, and stately homes, William Waldorf became a British subject and acquired the title of Viscount Astor. In New York during the 1890s and after, the two feuding Astors built monumental grand hotels, chief among them the original Waldorf-Astoria on lower Fifth Avenue. The Astor hotels transformed social behavior. Home of the chafing dish and the velvet rope, the Waldorf-Astoria drew the rich, famous, and fashionable. It was the setting for the most notorious society event of the era—a costume extravaganza put on by its hosts during a time of widespread need and unemployment. The celebrity-packed lobbies, public rooms, lavish suites, and exclusive restaurants of the grand hotels became distinctive theaters of modern life.
Viking 2006 196 pages

The Fillmore East: recollections of rock theater

Kostelanetz, Richard
For three short years, from 1968 to 1971, New York's Fillmore East, housed in an abandoned second run movie house on New York's Lower East Side, was the greatest rock palace in the world. The best acts played there; it had its own resident light show presenting some of the most exciting visual images ever seen; and it was managed by the imaginative Bill Graham, who specialized in introducing the audience to new acts. Fans came from around the world and across the neighborhood; one dedicated audience member, then-twenty-eight-year-old performance artist and writer Richard Kostelanetz, attended religiously, keeping notes on the performances, interviewing the musicians, and documenting the shows. Now, he has pulled together these documents, along with original program notes and memories of other regulars, to produce the complete history of the theater. Photographer Raeanne Rubenstein, who got her start as a teenage news photographer, has opened her files to provide many never-before-seen performance photos of the greatest acts. This is a must-have for those who were there and all those who wish they could have been!
Schirmer Books 1995 212 pages

Twenty minutes in Manhattan

Sorkin, Michael
""This is the most brilliant epitome of Manhattan ever written." --Mike Davis Every morning, the architect and writer Michael Sorkin walks from his apartment in Greenwich Village to his office in Tribeca. Unlike most commuters, Sorkin isn't in a hurry, and he doesn't try to drown out his surroundings. Instead, he's always paying attention. As he descends the narrow stairs of his town house, Sorkin explains why New York doesn't have the grand stairwells so common in European apartment buildings. Stepping out onto his block, he imagines a better, more efficient, far less dirty way to dispose of garbage. As he crosses Canal Street, he remembers the mad proposals for tunnels, elevated highways, and mega-structures that threatened lower Manhattan and could have destroyed its urban fabric. Fifty years after Jane Jacobs's groundbreaking The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Sorkin's vision of city life is every bit as perceptive and fine-grained as that of Jacobs's classic. With important insights into history, architecture, and public policy, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan is an extraordinary, deeply personal look at a city undergoing--always undergoing--dramatic transformations"--
North Point Press 2013-03-12 258 pages

Typhoid Mary: an urban historical

Bourdain, Anthony
In 1906, at a prosperous Long Island summer home, a family falls ill and typhold is diagnosed. When Dr George Soper is called in to find the source of the contagion, he notices that the household cook has gone missing. She is Mary Mallon, the woman who would become known as Typhoid Mary. Soper, sanitary engineer turned sleuth, sees Mary as his Moriarty. He finds there has been an outbreak of typhoid fever in every household she has worked in over the past decade. Mary is a 'carrier', a seemingly healthy individual who passes on her dangerous germs, sometimes with fatal consequences. Now Soper must hunt the cook down before she can infect more unsuspecting victims. A poor Irish immigrant, Mary refuses to believe that she can harbour typhoid in her strong and healthy body, and she doesn't intend to go quietly. In this fascinating true story Bourdain, in an homage from one cook to another, follows Mary through the kitchens of New York, putting a human face to a desperate and unintentional murderer, and examines a time, and a life, with his inimitable style.
Bloomsbury 2005 160 pages

Citizen Koch: an autobiography

Koch, Edward I.
Best known for his "How'm I doing?" approach to politics and life, as well as his candid stands on controversial issues, Ed Koch survived his years in public office by being the most outspoken and candid mayor in the history of New York City. Citizen Koch is an insightful, funny, and outrageous memoir about life, politics, and the City of New York. Ed's taken off the gloves and bares all about the highs and lows of his mayoralty and life. Besides being a hard-hitting, unusually honest political memoir, Citizen Koch is filled with heartfelt reminiscences from Koch's life - his childhood working as a hatcheck boy in a Newark dancehall with his immigrant parents during the Depression, his years living in Brooklyn, his World War II experiences as a Sergeant in the 104th Infantry Division, his time as a young attorney, and much, much more. Best of all, he chronicles his introduction to politics and offers a private and personal recounting of his nine years as a U.S. Congressman and three terms as Mayor of New York City. And, for the first time, Ed discusses his contemplation of suicide during the corruption crisis that clouded his third term. In Citizen Koch, Ed Koch also provides hilarious anecdotes and witty reminiscences from his years in public life, including wonderful stories from his time in Gracie Mansion and visits with Menachem Begin, Sir Laurence Olivier, Leonard Bernstein, Mother Teresa, and audiences with Presidents Bush and Nixon, Daniel Ortega, Pope John Paul II, and many, many others. And, perhaps best of all, Ed discusses his life out of office and offers up his opinions on many of the issues facing America today. Citizen Koch is the most candid, searching, and intimateportrait of one of our best-known public figures.
St. Martin's Press 1992 281 pages

Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a changing city, 1920-2010

Gurock, Jeffrey S.
Jews in Gotham follows the Jewish saga in ever-changing New York City from the end of the First World War into the first decade of the new millennium. This lively portrait details the complex dynamics that caused Jews to persist, abandon, or be left behind in their neighborhoods during critical moments of the past century. It shows convincingly that New York retained its preeminence as the capital of American Jews because of deep roots in local worlds.
New York University Press 2015-01-08 327 pages