The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PRIVATEERS, PIRATES AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Tuesday, March 26, 6:30pm at the New-York Historical Society (170 Central Park West) The story of the founding of the US Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that were… Read More
Greg Young is moderating TWO book-related events in New York in February and March. Mark your calendars: THE TRIALS OF MADAME RESTELL and A WOMAN’S LIFE IS A HUMAN LIFE February 28, 7pm at P&T Knitwear (180 Orchard St) P&T Knitwear is pleased to welcome historians Nicholas L. Syrett and Felicia Kornbluh for a discussion of their newest books, The Trials… Read More
Crosswords, jigsaws, mazes, rebuses, Rubik’s cubes, Myst, Words With Friends — and now Wordle? Not only have people loved puzzles for centuries, they’ve actually gone wild for them. Every few years, a new puzzle comes along to captivate the nation. But each of these little games has an extraordinary history and for this special show,… Read More
The best gifts in the world are books and history lovers, in particular, want nothing more than more books than they possibly have time to read. (My own library and its aching shelves are witness to this.) Here are some of my favorite books of 2022 (with a couple award-winners published in 2021), stories which… Read More
Two books won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History this year, underscoring the excellent offerings on the history shelf in 2021. They are two wildly different stories but they share a similar theme — the complicated relationship between the United States and foreign nations. In Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice… Read More
Most New Yorkers have probably never been to Co-Op City, the massive residential development in the Bronx. And that’s partially by design. This historic development, built upon the site of the old Freedomland amusement park, is the largest single residential development in the world. It is a true city-within-a-city — and also a place seemingly… Read More
Playboy Magazine called Herb Cohen “the world’s greatest negotiator” and whether or not that was true, Cohen could convince you that it most certainly was. He wrote You Can Negotiate Anything and in 1982 it became a best-seller during a wave of self-help books. A year before its release, Cohen became involved in the Iran… Read More
Privateers have been much maligned in history, so much so that perhaps you didn’t realize their important role in gaining America its independence from Great Britain. If your first image of a privateer is a sinister, blood-thirsty madman with a knife in his teeth and a skull on his sails, you’re probably thinking of a… Read More
In 1857 Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell threw open the doors to the New York Infirmary for Women and Children at 58 Bleecker Street, revolutionary as being the first hospital in the world to employ an all-female staff. We rightly see this today as a major stride in the rights of women as medical professionals and… Read More
When a terrible fire swept through lower Manhattan on the late evening of December 16, 1835, and into the morning, many believed the city would never recover. As we’ve spoken about in our podcast on the subject, “the massive fire, among the worst in American history in terms of its economic impact, devastated the city … destroying… Read More
“Such is the world, or, rather, one infinitesimal portion of the cosmos, in the year 2015, according to the ancient calendar, or 90 since the Terror.” From the original illustrations of The Doomsman: a look up Park Row in 2015, a decrepit row of deteriorating structures. You can clearly see the ruins of old Post… Read More
In the 1850s, New York City had become the third largest German-speaking capital in the world, topped only by Berlin and Vienna. In just thirty years — since the first significant influx of immigrants in the 1820s — Germans had helped to transform the city’s cultural life. But today, even as we celebrate a tapestry… Read More
Calling all fans of Downton Abbey! The newest episode of The Gilded Gentleman podcast, hosted by Carl Raymond, features a very special guest. New York Times bestselling author Carol Wallace discusses her just published novel of the Gilded Age called Our Kind of People as well insights on her book To Marry an English Lord which served as an inspiration for Downton… Read More
Our annual holiday history-book gift guide is here! Of course that also means gifts for you. You don’t have to give these away at all. Treat yourself or that history lover in your life to one of these fascinating 2021 releases, some of our favorite reads of the year. NOTE: Some of them have been… Read More
New York City (and the surrounding region) was the capital of movie making at the industry’s inception until the major studios moved out to Hollywood in the mid 1910s. By the late 1960s, a creative revolution of independently made film — a “New Hollywood” movement, inspired by European filmmakers and driven by film students will… Read More