At the height of World War II, a B-24 Liberator bomber vanished with its crew while on a training mission over Upstate New York. The final hours and ultimate resting place of pilot Keith Ponder and seven other US aviators aboard the plane remain mysteries to this day. [Read more…] about The Search Continues For A WWII Bomber Lost in Lake Ontario
Books
Field of Corpses: Arthur St. Clair & the Death of an American Army
November 4th, 1791 was a black day in American history. General Arthur St. Clair’s army encountered an Indigenous military force in what is now western Ohio.
In just three hours at what is known as St. Clair’s defeat, the Battle of the Wabash, or the Battle of a Thousand Slain, St. Clair’s force sustained the greatest loss ever inflicted on the United States Army by Native Americans — a total nearly three times larger than that incurred in the more famous Custer fight of 1876. [Read more…] about Field of Corpses: Arthur St. Clair & the Death of an American Army
After Icebergs: A NY Artist’s 1859 Arctic Adventure
The new edition of After Icebergs with a Painter A Summer Voyage to Labrador and around Newfoundland (Black Dome Press, 2022), by Louis Legrand Noble with an introduction by William L. Coleman, looks at an internationally renowned American artist of fame and fortune at the very peak of his powers.
A pastor and lauded writer with a sharp eye for revealing and humorous detail, Noble describes a journey fraught with danger and drama aboard the schooner Integrity to the latitudes where icebergs dwell with Hudson River School painter Frederic Church. [Read more…] about After Icebergs: A NY Artist’s 1859 Arctic Adventure
Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent
The new book Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent… and All the Places It Could Have Gone Terribly Wrong (Twelve, 2023) by Bob Thompson takes readers on a time-traveling adventure through the crucial places American independence was won and might have been lost. [Read more…] about Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent
Assassin in Utopia: The Oneida Community & The Garfield Assassination
The new book An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder (Pegasus Crime, 2023) by Susan Wels is a true crime odyssey that explores a forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history, leading the reader from a free-love community in Upstate New York to the shocking assassination of President James Garfield. [Read more…] about Assassin in Utopia: The Oneida Community & The Garfield Assassination
A New Archaeological History of New York City
The new book Buried Beneath the City: An Archaeological History of New York (Columbia University Press, 2022) by Nan A. Rothschild, Amanda Sutphin, H. Arthur Bankoff, and Jessica Striebel MacLean uses urban archaeology to retell the history of New York, from the deeper layers of the past to the topsoil of recent events. [Read more…] about A New Archaeological History of New York City
New Empire State Trail Cycling Guide Released
Parks & Trails New York (PTNY) has announced the publication of a new trail travel guidebook, Cycling the Hudson and Champlain Valleys. The 400-mile north-south route of the Empire State Trail, the longest statewide trail in the nation, is the focus of the new book. [Read more…] about New Empire State Trail Cycling Guide Released
The Fulton Fish Market: A History
The Fulton Fish Market stands out as an iconic New York institution. At first a neighborhood retail market for many different kinds of food, it became the nation’s largest fish and seafood wholesaling center by the late nineteenth century.
Waves of immigrants worked at the Fulton Fish Market and then introduced the rest of the city to their seafood traditions. In popular culture, the market — celebrated by Joseph Mitchell in The New Yorker — conjures up images of the bustling East River waterfront, late-night fishmongering, organized crime, and a vanished working-class New York. [Read more…] about The Fulton Fish Market: A History
Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park
The new book Heaven on the Hudson: Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park (Empire State Editions, 2022) by Stephanie Azzarone with photographs by Robert F. Rodriguez is a colorful tale of a singular New York City neighborhood and the personalities who make it special.
To outsiders or East Siders, Riverside Park and Riverside Drive may not have the star status of Fifth Avenue or Central Park West. But at the city’s westernmost edge, there is a quiet and beauty like few other places in all of New York. There are miles of mansions and monuments, acres of flora, and a breadth of wildlife ranging from Peregrine falcons to goats. [Read more…] about Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park
One Immigrant Family’s Italian Roots
This week on The Historians Podcast, Giovanni Ruscitti of Colorado is author of the memoir Cobblestones, Conversations, and Corks: A Son’s Discovery of His Italian Heritage. Ruscitti chronicles the history of his Italian immigrant family and a visit to his ancestral homeland of Cansano in Abruzzo. [Read more…] about One Immigrant Family’s Italian Roots