The latest episode of “Empire State Engagements” features a conversation with New York State Museum Senior Historian and Curator Brad Utter about his recent exhibit on the Erie Canal, “Enterprising Waters,” as well as his book of the same title, published by SUNY Press in 2020. [Read more…] about Brad Utter Talks About His Canal Exhibit, Book Experience
Books
A Time Travel Novel Visits Amsterdam, NY
This week on The Historians Podcast, Linda Wisniewski discusses her book Where the Stork Flies (Sand Hill Review Press, 2021), a time travel novel about a librarian who meets a 19th century ancestor and the medieval Polish Queen Jadwiga. There are several scenes in the author’s home town of Amsterdam, New York, as well as scenes in Poland in 1825. [Read more…] about A Time Travel Novel Visits Amsterdam, NY
An Interview With Brad Edmondson On Adirondack History
The most recent episode of “Empire State Engagements” features a conversation with author Brad Edmondson about his book A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks (Three Hills/Cornell University Press, 2021). [Read more…] about An Interview With Brad Edmondson On Adirondack History
Posh Portals: Elegant Upper West Side Entrances
Andrew Alpern, author of Posh Portals: Elegant Entrances and Ingratiating Ingresses to Apartments for the Affluent in New York City (Abbeville Press, 2020), says first impressions count when it comes to the luxury buildings of the city, which is what inspired him to write Posh Portals. [Read more…] about Posh Portals: Elegant Upper West Side Entrances
The Environmental Movement That Tamed Adirondacks
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks (Cornell University Press, 2021) by Brad Edmondson shares the story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). [Read more…] about The Environmental Movement That Tamed Adirondacks
John Hersey and the Hiroshima Cover-up
In Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World (Simon & Schuster, 2020), a crisply-written, well-researched book, Lesley Blume, a journalist and biographer, tells the fascinating story of the background to John Hersey’s path-breaking article “Hiroshima” and of its extraordinary impact upon the world.
In 1945, although only 30 years of age, Hersey was a very prominent war correspondent for Time magazine — a key part of publisher Henry Luce’s magazine empire — and living in the fast lane. That year, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, A Bell for Adano, which had already been adapted into a movie and a Broadway play. Born the son of missionaries in China, Hersey had been educated at upper class, elite institutions, including the Hotchkiss School, Yale, and Cambridge. During the war, Hersey’s wife, Frances Ann, a former lover of young Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, arranged for the three of them to get together over dinner. Kennedy impressed Hersey with the story of how he saved his surviving crew members after a Japanese destroyer rammed his boat, PT-109. This led to a dramatic article by Hersey on the subject — one rejected by the Luce publications but published by the New Yorker. The article launched Kennedy on his political career and, as it turned out, provided Hersey with the bridge to a new employer – the one that sent him on his historic mission to Japan. [Read more…] about John Hersey and the Hiroshima Cover-up
New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York
The city of New York was at the center of the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade during the 1850s and early 1860 conveying kidnapped and enslaved Africans from the coast of West Africa primarily into Cuba where there was an expanding sugar industry.
In The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (Yale Univ. Press, 2020), John Harris, a professor of history at Erskine College in South Carolina, estimates that between 1853 and 1867, 474 shipments carrying almost 200,000 men women and children were brought to Cuba. Most of this was brokered by transplanted Brazilians and Portuguese known as the Portuguese Company, who shifted their operation to New York because of the decline of the Angola to Brazil slave trade in the 1850s. Harris argues they were supported by the pro-slavery faction of the city’s Democratic Party and its chief financial institutions. [Read more…] about New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York
Parish Lifeblood: Italian-Americans In Williamsburg (Podcast)
In the latest episode of Empire State Engagements Dr. Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada talks about her ethnographic study of Italian-American men’s Catholic devotion, Lifeblood of the Parish; Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2020). She discussed her experiences over six years of work engaging the parish community; reading tattoos as devotional texts; playfulness and devotion in masculine spaces; the rich history of Italian-American Catholicism in Williamsburg; and the endurance of this parish, tradition, and community – despite decades of challenges ranging from reactionary clergymen to Robert Moses to gentrifying hipsters. [Read more…] about Parish Lifeblood: Italian-Americans In Williamsburg (Podcast)
Old Stone Fort Hosting Lecture By Author Chuck D’Imperio
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
The Old Stone Fort Museum and Schoharie County Historical Society have announced a virtual lecture with local radio personality and author Chuck D’Imperio, who will give a behind the scenes look at the development of his latest book Open House: 35 Historic Upstate New York Homes, set for Tuesday, June 8th.
[Read more…] about Old Stone Fort Hosting Lecture By Author Chuck D’Imperio
Washington’s Army: Surviving the Winters
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
George Washington and his Continental Army braving the frigid winter at Valley Forge form an iconic image in the popular history of the American Revolution. Such winter camps were also a critical factor in the waging and winning of the War of Independence.