Even though the LaGuardia Library's print books cannot be accessed due to building closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, our ebooks are available. Look for titles below with the call number "available online."
You may also be able to find some of these titles through your local library
Landmarks of New York III by 
The Encyclopedia of New York City (2nd ed.) by 
The Assassination of New York by 
Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover's Companion to New York City by 
New York Civic Sculpture: A Pictorial Guide by 
Artwalks in New York: Delightful Discoveries of Public Art and Gardens in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island by 
The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts by 
The Statue of Liberty Revisited: Making a Universal Symbol by 
The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? by Also in Library: Stacks HN 80 .N5 S83 2007Monuments and Masterpieces: Histories and Views of Public Sculpture in New York City by 
Only in New York: An exploration of the world's most fascinating, frustrating and irrepressible city by No one denies that New York City is unique--but what makes it sui generis? Sam Roberts, a longtime city reporter, has puzzled over this in print and in his popular New York Times podcasts for years. In Only in New York, updated with new tales and fascinating glimpses into uniquely NYC life, he writes about what makes this city tick and why things are the way they are in the greatest of all metropolises on earth. The more than 75 essays in this book cover a variety of topics, including: -How do New Yorkers react during disasters? -Maritime history (the Hudson River) -Crowds, space, and population growth -1908: a year in History history -Jewish Daily Forward -What happens when a neighborhood loses its tony ZIP code? A winning and informative gift book for every fan of "the city," Only in New York is elegantly written and solidly reported.
AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.) Hailed as "extraordinarily learned" (New York Times), "blithe in spirit and unerring in vision," (New York Magazine), and the "definitive record of New York's architectural heritage" (Municipal Art Society), Norval White and Elliot Willensky's book is an essential reference for everyone withan interest in architecture and those who simply want to know more about New York City.First published in 1968, the AIA Guide to New York City has long been the definitive guide to the city's architecture. Moving through all five boroughs, neighborhood by neighborhood, it offers the most complete overview of New York's significant places, past and present. The Fifth Edition continuesto include places of historical importance - including extensive coverage of the World Trade Center site - while also taking full account of the construction boom of the past 10 years, a boom that has given rise to an unprecedented number of new buildings by such architects as Frank Gehry, NormanFoster, and Renzo Piano. All of the buildings included in the Fourth Edition have been revisited and re-photographed and much of the commentary has been re-written, and coverage of the outer boroughs - particularly Brooklyn -- has been expanded. Famed skyscrapers and historic landmarks are detailed, but so, too, are firehouses, parks, churches, parking garages, monuments, and bridges. Boasting more than 3000 new photographs, 100 enhanced maps, and thousands of short and spirited entries, the guide is arranged geographically by borough, witheach borough divided into sectors and then into neighborhood. Extensive commentaries describe the character of the divisions.Knowledgeable, playful, and beautifully illustrated, here is the ultimate guided tour of New York's architectural treasures. Acclaim for earlier editions of the AIA Guide to New York City: "An extraordinarily learned, personable exegesis of our metropolis. No other American or, for that matter, world city can boast so definitive a one-volume guide to its built environment." -- Philip Lopate, New York Times "Blithe in spirit and unerring in vision." -- New York Magazine "A definitive record of New York's architectural heritage... witty and helpful pocketful which serves as arbiter of architects, Baedeker for boulevardiers, catalog for the curious, primer for preservationists, and sourcebook to students. For all who seek to know of New York, it is here. No homeshould be without a copy." -- Municipal Art Society "There are two reasons the guide has entered the pantheon of New York books. One is its encyclopedic nature, and the other is its inimitable style--'smart, vivid, funny and opinionated' as the architectural historian Christopher Gray once summed it up in pithy W and W fashion." -- Constance Rosenblum, New York Times"A book for architectural gourmands and gastronomic gourmets." -- The Village VoiceCommunity District Needs Published by the New York City Dept. of Planning.
Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City by Look around New York, and you'll probably see birds: wood ducks swimming in Queens, a stalking black-crowned night-heron in Brooklyn, great horned owls perching in the Bronx, warblers feeding in Central Park, or Staten Island's purple martins flying to and fro. You might spot hawks and falcons nesting on skyscrapers or robins belting out songs from trees along the street. America's largest metropolis teems with birdlife in part because it sits within the great Atlantic flyway where migratory birds travel seasonally between north and south. The Big Apple's miles of coastline, magnificent parks, and millions of trees attract dozens of migrating species every year and are also home year-round to scores of resident birds. There is no better way to identify and learn about New York's birds than with this comprehensive field guide from New York City naturalist Leslie Day. Her book will quickly teach you what each species looks like, where they build their nests, what they eat, the sounds of their songs, what time of year they appear in the city, the shapes and colors of their eggs, and where in the five boroughs you can find them-which is often in the neighborhood you call home. The hundreds of stunning photographs by Beth Bergman and gorgeous illustrations by Trudy Smoke will help you identify the ninety avian species commonly seen in New York. Once you enter the world of the city's birds, life in the great metropolis will never look the same.
Experience New York City New York is a fascinating city, packed with iconic sights and an endless array of attractions, from great art to top restaurants and top-rate theatre to unrivalled shopping. Be inspired to visit by the new Insight Guide Experience New York, a beautifully-packaged full-colour guide to one of the world's most exciting cities. Inside Insight Guide Experience New York: A brand-new series covering all the very best experiences on offer. Stunning, colourful photography brings this beautiful city and its people to life. Local expert authors guide you to authentic New York experiences and fresh discoveries. A dip-in "In the mood for..." section suggests the best places to go for fine dining, retail therapy, romance and family fun, amongst others. The neighbourhoods sections contain our selection what to see and do from an insider's perspective, from browsing designer boutiques on the Upper East Side to exploring historic Harlem. Detailed, high-quality maps throughout will help you get around and our Essentials A-Z section give you all the practical information you need for planning a memorable trip. About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-colour print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure. 'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine
Fodor's New York City 2016 by The lights, the sounds, the energy: New York City is the quintessential American city, an always exciting, constantly changing destination that people visit again and again.Fodor's New York City, with rich color photos throughout, captures the universal appeal of world-renowned museums, iconic music venues, the lights of Broadway spectacles, and, of course, the vast array of gastronomic delights.
Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian Place Names in Greater New York and Vicinity by Drivers exiting the New Jersey Turnpike for Perth Amboy, and map readers marveling at all the places in Pennsylvania named Lackawanna, need no longer wonder how these names originated. Manhattan to Minisink provides the histories of more than five hundred place names in the Greater New York area, including the five boroughs, western Long Island, the New York counties north of the city, and parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Robert S. Grumet, a leading ethnohistorian specializing in the region’s Indian peoples, draws on his meticulous research and deep knowledge to determine the origins of Native, and Native-sounding, place names. Grumet divides his encyclopedic entries into two parts. The first comprises an alphabetical listing of nearly 340 Indian place names preserved in colonial records, located by county and state. Each entry includes the name’s language of origin, if known, and a brief discussion of its etymology, including its earliest known occurrence in written records, the history of its appearance on maps, and the name’s current status. The book’s second section presents nearly 200 place names that, though widely believed to be of Indian origin, are “imports, inventions, invocations, or impostors.” Mistranslations are abundant in place names, and Grumet has ferreted out the mistakes and deceptions among home-grown colonial etymologies that New Yorkers have accepted for centuries. Complete with a concise history of Greater New York, a discussion of the region’s naming practices, a useful timeline, and four maps, this is an invaluable resource both for scholars and for readers who want a more intimate knowledge of the place where they live or visit.
New York Scientific: A Culture of Inquiry, Knowledge, and Learning by This book introduces the reader to the visible memorabilia of science and scientists in all the five boroughs of New York City - statues, busts, plaques, buildings, and other artifacts. In addition, it extends to some scientists and institutions currently operating in the city. New York hasbeen known as a world center of commerce, finance, communications, transportation, and culture, but it also is a world center in science. The city is home to renowned universities and research laboratories, a museum of natural history and other museums related to science, a science academy,historical societies, botanical gardens and zoos, libraries, and a Hall of Science as well as a large number of world-renowned scientists. The book pays special attention to the role of this city in welcoming persecuted scientists and letting African-American and women scientists thrive. The book is presented in an informative and entertaining way, dotted with scientific gossip and anecdotes, and can be enjoyed even without thereader's actual presence in the city. Over eight hundred photographs illustrate the book. They may induce the reader to make their own discoveries in New York.
You Are Here - NYC: Mapping the Soul of the City by Maps are magical. Every graphic, like every story, has a point of view, and New York is rife with mapmaking possibilities, thick with mythology, and glutted with history.You Are Here: NYC assembles some two hundred maps charting every inch and facet of the five boroughs, depicting New Yorks of past and present, and a city that never was. "A Nightclub Map of Harlem" traces a boozy night from the Radium and the Cotton Club to the Savoy and then the Lafayette; "Wonders of New York" pinpoints three hundred sites of interest, including the alleged location of Captain Kidd's buried treasure; the Ghostbusters subway map plots the route from Astral Projections Place to Stay Puft Street; and a rejected proposal of ornate topiaries illustrates a Central Park that might have been. This sequel to the best-sellingYou Are Here includes original essays by Bob Mankoff, Maria Popova, Sarah Boxer, and Rebecca Cooper, among others.
If You're Thinking of Living In...: All About 115 Great Neighborhoods in and Around New York by 
Store Front: the disappearing face of New York by Within the pages of STORE FRONT, the reader may explore entire blocks that have not changed much in the past century, engaging in startling encounter with contemporary New York. Details of an architectural and cultural heritage that is fast disappearing such as signage, architectural adornment and window displays are presented in context, as they exist on the street, all in amazing detail.
Store Front 2: A history preserved : the disappearing face of New York by James and Karla Murray have been capturing impeccably accurate photographs of New York City since the 1990s. In the course of their travels throughout the city's boroughs they've also taken great care to document the stories behind the scenery. The Murrays have rendered the out of the way bodegas, candy shops and record stores just as faithfully as the historically important institutions and well known restaurants, bars and cafes. This 336 page volume collects the best of their work in one place.
The New York Times Book of New York : 549 Stories of the People, the Events, and the Life of the City, Past and Present by 
New York City Guide New York City must be the world's top urban destination: whether you're after great theatre, fascinating museums, luxurious hotels, history, nightlife, sumptuous dining or just city energy, you'll find it here. The newly updated Insight City Guide New York is a comprehensive full-colour travel guide to this exciting destination. From seeing the iconic sights such as the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty, to finding the most secluded parts of Central Park or the hippest bars in Greenwich Village, this book will make sure you go home having had the quintessential New York experience. Features by local writers explore every facet of the city, from the street-eats scene to the silver screen, with a special focus on the city's fabulous museums. Colour maps, plus floorplans of all the major museums, help you navigate with ease, while evocative photography brings New York to life. The detailed Travel Tips are full of practical advice plus our independent selection of the best hotels and restaurants. About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-color print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travelers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure. 'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine
Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas by Nonstop Metropolis, the culminating volume in a trilogy of atlases, conveys innumerable unbound experiences of New York City through twenty-six imaginative maps and informative essays. Bringing together the insights of dozens of experts--from linguists to music historians, ethnographers, urbanists, and environmental journalists--amplified by cartographers, artists, and photographers, it explores all five boroughs of New York City and parts of nearby New Jersey. We are invited to travel through Manhattan's playgrounds, from polyglot Queens to many-faceted Brooklyn, and from the resilient Bronx to the mystical kung fu hip-hop mecca of Staten Island. The contributors to this exquisitely designed and gorgeously illustrated volume celebrate New York City's unique vitality, its incubation of the avant-garde, and its literary history, but they also critique its racial and economic inequality, environmental impact, and erasure of its past. Nonstop Metropolis allows us to excavate New York's buried layers, to scrutinize its political heft, and to discover the unexpected in one of the most iconic cities in the world. It is both a challenge and homage to how New Yorkers think of their city, and how the world sees this capital of capitalism, culture, immigration, and more. Contributors: Sheerly Avni, Gaiutra Bahadur, Marshall Berman, Joe Boyd, Will Butler, Garnette Cadogan, Thomas J. Campanella, Daniel Aldana Cohen, Teju Cole, Joel Dinerstein, Paul La Farge, Francisco Goldman, Margo Jefferson, Lucy R. Lippard, Barry Lopez, Valeria Luiselli, Suketu Mehta, Emily Raboteau, Molly Roy, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Luc Sante, Heather Smith, Jonathan Tarleton, Astra Taylor, Alexandra T. Vazquez, Christina Zanfagna Interviews with: Valerie Capers, Peter Coyote, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Melle Mel, RZA
New York's Legal Landmarks: A guide to legal edifices, institutions, lore, history, and curiosities on the city's streets by I thoroughly enjoyed Bob Pigott's wonderful book, although it did make me a bit concerned that when we sent him to court on the Attorney General's business, he was more focused on the facades of the courthouses than the substance of the cases! -Eliot Spitzer, former New York Governor and New York Attorney General New York's Legal Landmarks takes you on a tour of Gotham through the eyes of a history-loving New York City lawyer. You'll visit courthouses past and present that were sites of sensational trials (both actual and in film), locations that figured in the nation's constitutional history, law firms where great Americans practiced law and the homes, schools and final resting places of Supreme Court Justices. Whether you want to stroll down the Lower East Side's Attorney Street or re-open the cold case of Judge Crater's disappearance, New York's Legal Landmarks is the guidebook for you. This volume is a joy for anyone even the least bit interested in New York's legal culture and landmarks. . . . The book belongs on your shelf and in your lap. -Albert M. Rosenblatt, former Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals and President of The Historical Society of the New York Courts
Food and the City: New York's Professional Chefs, Restaurateurs, Line Cooks, Street Vendors, and Purveyors Talk about What They Do and Why They Do It by In Food and the City, Ina Yalof takes us on an insider's journey into New York's food scene alongside the men and women who call it home. From old-schoolers such as David Fox, third-generation owner of Fox's U-bet syrup, and the outspoken Upper West Side butcher 'Schatzie', to new-kids-on-the-block including Patrick Collins, sous chef at The Dutch, and Brooklyn artisan Lauren Clark of Sucre Mort Pralines, Food and the City is a fascinating oral history with an unforgettable gallery of New Yorkers who embody the heart and soul of a culinary metropolis.To find more resources about New York City, search the library catalog using the search box above or search the catalog directly. To read ebooks from off-campus, see login instructions.
Here are some suggested searches to get you started:
New York: An Illustrated History (Expanded ed.) by Also in Library: Reference (Non-Circulating) F 128.3 .N585 2003; Stacks F 128.3 .N585 2003
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by 
Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century by 
Picturing New York: The City from Its Beginnings to the Present by Plan for New York City, 1969: A Proposal by Also in Library: Reference (Non-Circulating) Oversize HT 168 .N5 A5History Preserved : A Guide to New York City Landmarks and Historic Districts by 
In Old New York: A Classic History of New York City by 
Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 by Also in Library: Stacks BV1642 .U5 R63 2016
Greater Gotham: a history of New York City from 1898 to 1919 by Also in Library: Stacks F128.5 .W227 2017The WPA Guide to New York City : The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s New York by 
City of Sedition: The history of New York City during the Civil War by Without his New York supporters, it's highly unlikely Abraham Lincoln would have made it to the White House. Yet the majority of New Yorkers never voted for him and were openly hostile to him and his politics. New Yorkers reacted to Lincoln's wartime policies with the deadliest rioting in American history. Here, a gallery of fascinating New Yorkers comes to life, the likes of Horace Greeley, Walt Whitman, Julia Ward Howe, Boss Tweed, Thomas Nast, Matthew Brady and Herman Melville. CITY OF SEDITION follows the fortunes of these figures and chronicles how many New Yorkers seized the opportunities the conflict presented to amass capital, create new industries and expand their markets, laying the foundation for the city's - and the nation's - growth.
Revolting New York: How 400 years of riot, rebellion, uprising, and revolution shaped a city by Occupy Wall Street did not come from nowhere. It was part of a long history of riot, revolt, uprising, and sometimes even revolution that has shaped New York City. From the earliest European colonization to the present, New Yorkers have been revolting. Hard hitting, revealing, and insightful, Revolting New York tells the story of New York's evolution through revolution, a story of near-continuous popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) uprising. Richly illustrated with more than ninety historical and contemporary images, historical maps, and maps drawn especially for the book, Revolting New York provides the first comprehensive account of the historical geography of revolt in New York, from the earliest uprisings of the Munsee against the Dutch occupation of Manhattan in the seventeenth century to the Black Lives Matter movement and the unrest of the Trump era. Through this rich narrative, editors Neil Smith and Don Mitchell reveal a continuous, if varied and punctuated, history of rebellion in New York that is as vital as the more standard histories of formal politics, planning, economic growth, and restructuring that largely define our consciousness of New York's story.
Affordable Housing in New York: The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City by How has America's most expensive and progressive city helped its residents to live? Since the nineteenth century, the need for high-quality affordable housing has been one of New York City's most urgent issues. Affordable Housing in New York explores the past, present, and future of the city's pioneering efforts, from the 1920s to the major initiatives of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The book examines the people, places, and policies that have helped make New York livable, from early experiments by housing reformers and the innovative public-private solutions of the 1970s and 1980s to today's professionalized affordable housing industry. More than two dozen leading scholars tell the story of key figures of the era, including Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, and Ed Koch. Over twenty-five individual housing complexes are profiled, including Queensbridge Houses, America's largest public housing complex; Stuyvesant Town; Co-op City; and recent additions like Via Verde. Plans, models, archival photos, and newly commissioned portraits of buildings and tenants put the efforts of the past century into social, political, and cultural context and look ahead to future prospects for below-market subsidized housing. A richly illustrated, dynamic portrait of an evolving city, this is a comprehensive and authoritative history of public and middle-income housing in New York and contributes significantly to contemporary debates on how to enable future generations of New Yorkers to call the city home. Contributors include: Matthias Altwicker, Hilary Ballon, Lizabeth Cohen, Andrew S. Dolkart, Peter Eisenstadt, Richard Greenwald, Christopher Klemek, Jeffrey A. Kroessler, Nancy H. Kwak, Nadia A. Mian, Annemarie Sammartino, David Schalliol, Susanne Schindler, David Smiley, Jonathan Soffer, Fritz Umbach, and Samuel Zipp. Featured housing complexes include: Amalgamated Cooperative Apartments * Amsterdam Houses * Bell Park Gardens * Boulevard Gardens * Co-op City * East River Houses * Eastwood * Harlem River Houses * Hughes House * Jacob Riis Houses * Johnson Houses * Marcus Garvey Village * Melrose Commons * Nehemiah Houses * Paul Laurence Dunbar Apartments * Penn South * Queensbridge Houses * Queensview * Ravenswood Houses * Riverbend Houses * Rochdale Village * Schomburg Plaza * Starrett City * Stuyvesant Town * Sunnyside Gardens * Twin Parks * Via Verde * West Side Urban Renewal Area * West Village Houses * Williamsburg Houses
New York Mid-Century, 1945-1965: Art, Architecture, Design, Dance, Theater, Nightlife by New York Mid-Century is the story of how the postwar Big Apple emerged as the cultural capital of the world. Annie Cohen-Solal brings alive the influential critics and patrons, the legendary galleries, and the artists themselves. Paul Goldberger presents the modernist architectural masterpieces that created the city's sleek new profile, highlighting both public and private spaces. Robert Gottlieb invites us to relive the heyday of the musical, explore the great jazz clubs of Harlem, and peek into the inventive studios of the dance world. Richly illustrated with art, photographs, and ephemera, this volumeis a stirring collection of a remarkably fertile period in the city's history. 
World War I New York: A Guide to the City's Enduring Ties to the Great War by American involvement in World War I started and ended in New York Harbor. In 1917 many troops departed from the city which would be an important hub throughout the war as recruiting and patriotic efforts continued. Following the Armistice in 1918, more memorials were erected to World War I veterans than for any other event. Now on the centennial, explore more than 50 locations in New York that have ties to The Great War and tell the stories behind each.
Capital by Acclaimed artist Kenneth Goldsmith's thousand-page homage to New York City Here is a kaleidoscopic assemblage and poetic history of New York: an unparalleled and original homage to the city, composed entirely of quotations. Drawn from a huge array of sources--histories, memoirs, newspaper articles, novels, government documents, emails--and organized into interpretive categories that reveal the philosophical architecture of the city, Capital is the ne plus ultra of books on the ultimate megalopolis. It is also a book of experimental literature that transposes Walter Benjamin's unfinished magnum opus of literary montage on the modern city, The Arcades Project, from nineteenth-century Paris to twentieth-century New York, bringing the streets and its inhabitants to life in categories such as "Sex," "Central Park," "Commodity," "Loneliness," "Gentrification," "Advertising," and "Mapplethorpe." Capital is a book designed to fascinate and to fail--for can a megalopolis truly ever be captured in words? Can a history, no matter how extensive, ever be comprehensive? Each reading of this book, and of New York, is a unique and impossible project.
Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730 by 
The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City's History (Revised and expanded ed.) by 
New York City: A Cultural History by 
In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City`s Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis by A history that extends from the 1750s to the present, In Pursuit of Privilege recounts upper-class New Yorkers' struggle to create a distinct world guarded against outsiders, even as economic growth and democratic opportunity enabled aspirants to gain entrance. Despite their efforts, New York City's upper class has been drawn into the larger story of the city both through class conflict and through their role in building New York's cultural and economic foundations. In Pursuit of Privilege describes the famous and infamous characters and events at the center of this extraordinary history, from the elite families and wealthy tycoons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the Wall Street executives of today. From the start, upper-class New Yorkers have been open and aggressive in their behavior, keen on attaining prestige, power, and wealth. Clifton Hood sharpens this characterization by merging a history of the New York economy in the eighteenth century with the story of Wall Street's emergence as an international financial center in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the dominance of New York's financial and service sectors in the 1980s. Bringing together several decades of upheaval and change, he shows that New York's upper class did not rise exclusively from the Gilded Age but rather from a relentless pursuit of privilege, affecting not just the urban elite but the city's entire cultural, economic, and political fabric.
The Restless City: A short history of New York : from colonial times to the present (3rd ed.) by The Restless City: A Short History of New York from Colonial Times to the Present is a brief, insightful and lively history of the peoples, events and interactions that have formed New York City. Weaving together the shifting currents of economic, political, social, and cultural life, Joanne Reitano shows how New York has acted both as an indicator and a driver of the American experience in its negotiation of evolving urban challenges. The third edition of The Restless City has been updated to include new material on early settler/Native American interactions, and to be more fully inclusive of the outer boroughs of New York. Each chapter features at least two primary sources accompanied by discussion questions for students. Authoritative and comprehensive, The Restless City remains a superior resource for students and scholars interested in the rich history of the nation's premier urban center.
The Restless City Reader: A New York City Sourcebook by 
Gotham Rising: New York in the 1930s by New York is often described as the greatest city in the world. Yet much of the iconic architecture and culture which defines the city as we know it today - from the Empire State Building to the Pastrami sandwich#65533; - only came into being in the 1930s, in what author Jules Stewart argues was the most significant decade in the city's 400-year history in his new book, Gotham Rising: New York in the 1930s. After the roaring twenties, the catastrophic Wall Street Crash and the ensuing Depression seemed to spell disaster for the vibrant city. Instead, Stewart details how New York underwent an architectural, economic, social, and creative renaissance, on two levels: the four skyline icons that rose in the era (the Empire State Building, Waldorf-Astoria, Rockefeller Center, and the Chrysler Building), and with the cultural life in the streets below - the Harlem Renaissance championed by writers like Langston Hughes, the Jazz Age with the advent of Tin-Pan Alley, the birth of the swing era at places like the Cotton Club and with musical immortals like Duke Ellington, the arrival of an avant-garde artistic movement with Jackson Pollock and the fine artists at the Art Students League, the Jewish scientific and intellectual scene that fled Nazi Germany, and more. Gotham Rising meant more than buildings and the arts. Stewart also details the leadership of the charismatic mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, who rose to power, declared war on the Mafia mobs running vast swathes of the city, attacked political corruption, and kick-started the economy through a variety of construction and infrastructure projects. The city was the author's birthplace, where he even spent time as a yellow cab driver - among "other various guises" - before beginning his career as a renowned journalist, translator, and historian. The result for the reader is a combination of meticulously-researched history writing about New York, with riveting stories spilling from every page. Gotham Rising is destined to become an essential title for the shelf of those who love American history and her most populous city. With a foreword by Amor Towles. Includes a 16 page-gallery of iconic Black & White plates and a map.
Tenements, Towers, and Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City by Here is New York, as you've never seen it before. A perfectly charming, sidesplittingly funny, intellectually entertaining illustrated history of the blocks, the buildings, and the guts of New York City, based on Julia Wertz's popular illustrated columns in The New Yorker and Harper's. In Tenements, Towers & Trash, Julia Wertz takes us behind the New York that you think you know. Not the tourist's New York-the Statue of Liberty makes a brief appearance and the Empire State Building not at all-but the guts, the underbelly, of this city that never sleeps. With drawings and comics in her signature style, Wertz regales us with streetscapes "Then and Now" and little-known tales, such as the lost history of Kim's Video, the complicated and unresolved business of Ray's Pizza, the vintage trash and horse bones that litter the shore of Brooklyn's Bottle Beach, the ludicrous pinball prohibition, Staten Island's secret abandoned boatyard, and the hair-raising legend of the infamous abortionist of Fifth Avenue, Madame Restell. From bars, bakeries, and bookstores to food carts, street cleaners, and apartments both cramped and grand, Tenements, Towers & Trash is a wild ride in a time machine taxi from the present day city to bygone days of yore.
New York, a Documentary Film [videorecording] by Recent blog posts from the Forgotten New York website.