The new book The Majestic Nature of the North: Thomas Kelah Wharton’s Journeys in Antebellum America through the Hudson River Valley and New England (SUNY Press, 2019), edited by Steven A. Walton and Michael J. Armstrong, features the travel diaries of nineteenth-century artist, educator, and architect Thomas Kelah Wharton, documenting his trips in the lower Hudson River Valley and New Orleans to Boston and back. [Read more…] about 19th Century Hudson River, New England Travel Diaries Published
Book Notices
Sing Sing’s Mysterious Inmate Author Number 1500 Revealed
In 1904, one year after his release from prison, a felon who used only the pen name Number 1500 wrote the book Life in Sing Sing, a rare look at what it was like to serve time inside the legendary penitentiary. The author also presents his thoughts on effective methods of rehabilitation. He comments, “The attitude…toward convicts that belong to the recidivist class is to punish them severely and, having failed with hard measures, to try harder ones.”
[Read more…] about Sing Sing’s Mysterious Inmate Author Number 1500 Revealed
Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, and Architecture
Suzanne Hinman’s new book The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, and Architecture in Gilded Age New York (Syracuse University Press, 2019) looks back to November 1891, the heart of Gilded Age Manhattan.
Thousands filled the streets surrounding Madison Square, when after countless struggles, Stanford White – the country’s most celebrated architect was about to dedicate America’s tallest tower, the final cap set atop his Madison Square Garden, the country’s grandest new palace of pleasure. Amid a flood of electric light and fireworks, the gilded figure topping the tower was suddenly revealed – an eighteen-foot nude sculpture of Diana, the Roman Virgin Goddess of the Hunt, created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, White’s pal. [Read more…] about Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, and Architecture
Forest and Crag, Major Northeastern Hiking History, Republished
Thirty years after its initial publication, Forest and Crag: A History of Hiking, Trail Blazing, and Adventure in the Northeast Mountains has been republished in an anniversary edition (SUNY Press, 2019).
Laura and Guy Waterman’s book is a history of the love affair with the mountains of the northern forests from the Catskills and the Adirondacks of New York to the Green Mountains of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the mountains of Maine. [Read more…] about Forest and Crag, Major Northeastern Hiking History, Republished
Adirondack Iroquoian and Algonquian History Published
Melissa Otis’ new book Rural Indigenousness, A History of Iroquoian and Algonquian Peoples of the Adirondacks (Syracuse University Press, 2019) takes a fresh look at the rich history of Algonquian and Iroquoian people, offering a study of the relationship between Native Americans and the Adirondacks.
The Adirondacks have been an Indigenous homeland for millennia, and the presence of Native people in the region was obvious but not well documented by Europeans, who did not venture into the interior between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet, by the late nineteenth century, historians had scarcely any record of their long-lasting and vibrant existence in the area. [Read more…] about Adirondack Iroquoian and Algonquian History Published
All the Nations Under Heaven Revised
First published in 1996, All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York (Revised, Columbia University Press, 2019), written by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Rovert W. Snyder, chronicles the role of immigrants and migrants in shaping the history and culture of New York City.
This updated edition of a classic text brings the story of the immigrant experience in New York City up to the present with new material on the city’s revival as a global metropolis with deeply rooted racial and economic inequalities. [Read more…] about All the Nations Under Heaven Revised
Historian Alan Brinkley: A Life in History
The new book Alan Brinkley: A Life in History (Columbia University Press, 2019), edited by David Greenberg, Moshik Temkin and Mason B. Williams, brings together essays on Brinkley’s major works and ideas, as well as personal reminiscences from leading historians and thinkers beyond the academy whom Brinkley collaborated with, befriended, and influenced.
The volume includes essays by critic Frank Rich, journalists Jonathan Alter and Nicholas Lemann, biographer A. Scott Berg, and historians Eric Foner and Lizabeth Cohen. Together, the seventeen essays that form the book chronicle the life and thought of a working historian, the development of historical scholarship in our time, and the role that history plays in our public life. [Read more…] about Historian Alan Brinkley: A Life in History
Widow Maker, A Maritime Tale of Lake Ontario
Susan Peterson Gateley’s new novel The Widow Maker, A Maritime Tale of Lake Ontario (Whiskey Hill Press, 2019) looks at the story of a female Lake Ontario sailor’s political enlightenment in the time of Rochester’s Susan B. Anthony, Oswego’s Dr. Mary Walker and Auburn’s Harriet Tubman.
The novel’s publication coincides with the centennial of the passage in Congress of the 19th amendment allowing the vote for women by the U. S. Congress (subsequently ratified in 1920). Much of the plot is based on actual historic events and takes place on Oswego’s waterfront in 1880 and on the open waters of Lake Ontario. [Read more…] about Widow Maker, A Maritime Tale of Lake Ontario
Book Launch: The Writing Irish of New York
The American Irish Historical Society has announced a book launch for The Writing Irish Of New York, a collection of original essays and remembrances by Colum McCann, Billy Collins, Luanne Rice, Malachy McCourt and many others who provide personal accounts of how generations of Irish authors found their voice in the Big Apple, has been set for Tuesday, February 12th at 7 pm. [Read more…] about Book Launch: The Writing Irish of New York
The Indian World of George Washington Lecture in NYC
Fraunces Tavern Museum in Manhattan, will present a lecture by Colin G. Calloway, author of The Indian World of George Washington (Oxford Univ. Press, 2018) about Native American land, power, people that shaped George Washington’s life at key moments, and also shaped the early history of the nation.
Calloway is John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. His previous books include A Scratch of the Pen and The Victory with No Name. [Read more…] about The Indian World of George Washington Lecture in NYC