History, Natural History & the Arts
The State University of New York Press is a university press affiliated with the State University of New York system. The press, which was founded in 1966, is located in Albany, New York and publishes scholarly works in various fields.
Over the last three-plus decades, Bill Kauffman has written about and interviewed upstate New York novelists, politicians, and civic activists who have given the region much of its interest to the author.
Upstaters: Poets, Pols, Prophets and Bush-League Heroes of Upstate New York (SUNY Press, 2026) collects these into a single volume. [Read more…] about Upstaters: Poets, Pols, Prophets & Bush-League Heroes
New York’s Great Lost Ballparks (SUNY Press, 2022) by Bob Carlin tells the story of New York playing grounds and ballparks of yesteryear. Organized by region and city, the book includes a complete list of New York’s historic ballparks in an easy-to-read guidebook format.
Each listing includes the name and location of the park, the years in operation, the names of the professional baseball clubs that called it their home, the park’s seating capacity, and a fun fact or two that distinguishes each locale. [Read more…] about New York’s Great Lost Ballparks Zoom Presentation Aug 13th
The Lostkills: Bushwhacking and Hiking the Lesser-Known Catskill Peaks (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2026) introduces readers to a mostly unknown group of Catskill peaks on public land in addition to some lightly used trails.
Alan Via refers to these places as “the Lostkills” as they include off-the-beaten-path hikes, mostly bushwhacks to smaller mountain summits, largely unexplored by the hiking community. [Read more…] about The Lostkills: Bushwhacking and Hiking the Lesser-Known Catskill Peaks
Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York: From the Suppressed to the Strange (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2026) by Jonathan Ezra Goldman offers a fresh look at 1920s New York City, unearthing stories of everyday life and marginalized communities.
In sections that intertwine entertainment, politics, art, technology, crime, shopping, eating, and recreation, the book portrays sweeping events such as the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, and immigration through anecdotes of individual experiences that counter the era’s popular conceptions of ballooning wealth and uproarious celebration. [Read more…] about Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York
Confronting Racism: Arthur Garfield Hays and the Fight for Equality, 1925–1954 (SUNY Press, 2025) by Richard F. Hamm explores how and why an elite member of the legal profession, Arthur Garfield Hays, confronted and fought against the ingrained racism of his society, illuminating key aspects of the long civil rights era.
Beginning in 1925 the corporate lawyer and civil libertarian Arthur Garfield Hays (1881 – 1954) began battling segregation. Best known as a co-founder and general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and for participating in notable cases including the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. [Read more…] about Arthur Garfield Hays and the Fight for Equality, 1925–1954
Longtime New York Almanack contributor Bruce Dearstyne has edited a collection of essays exploring how New York State understanding of freedom and liberty has evolved, and its relevance in American and world history.
Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2025) collects essays from several experts focusing on the struggle to fulfill the American Revolution‘s ideals of freedom and equality for all people over the history of New York. The State has often led the nation toward expanding its peoples’ rights. [Read more…] about A Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change
The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City (SUNY Press, 2025), offers a new look at over a century of New York City‘s history of Yiddish popular culture.
Henry H. Sapoznik – a Peabody Award-winning co-producer of NPR’s Yiddish Radio Project – tells the story in over a baker’s dozen chapters on theater, music, architecture, crime, Blacks and Jews, restaurants, real estate, and journalism. [Read more…] about A Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City
Lawrence R. Samuel’s Queens: A History of the Most Diverse Place on Earth (SUNY Press, 2025) charts the history of residential development of the New York City borough from the 1920s to today. The work focuses on the borough’s most remarkable aspect: its profound diversity as a multiethnic, multiracial, and multireligious place.
The narrative traces the evolution of Queens from a quasi-suburb of Manhattan for the white middle class into the most diverse county in the United States and, many contend, the most diverse place on the planet. Following this trajectory adds much to our understanding of the borough, the city, the country, and even the world. [Read more…] about Queens: A History of the Most Diverse Place on Earth
Arriving at a critical moment in the struggle for transgender rights, A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States (SUNY Press, 2025) is the most comprehensive history of transgender medicine to date, as told by more than forty scholars, physicians, psychologists, and activists from trans, gender-diverse, and allied medical communities.
Gender-affirming care is considered the gold standard for treatment of gender dysphoria. Endorsed by every major medical association in the United States, including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society, its modern roots date to the 1920s. [Read more…] about A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States
Town of Woodstock historian Richard Heppner’s new book, Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars (SUNY Press, 2024), explores the uncommon history of a small town in the shadow of Overlook Mountain in Ulster County, NY, as it moves through major changes during the twentieth century.
Few towns in America are as famous as Woodstock, New York — although Woodstock may be most famous for an event that happened many miles away. Long before the 1969 Woodstock festival put the town on the map, it had been a center for artists and free thinkers who found refuge in its rural setting. [Read more…] about Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars
SUNY Press has announced a new series, Studies in New York Law, edited by Albert M. Rosenblatt. Studies in New York Law is expected to highlight key legal issues and cases that have shaped New York (and the nation’s) history. Combining legal analysis with a focus on specific cases or events, books in the series will address the theoretical and practical applications of New York law as it has evolved over time. [Read more…] about SUNY Press Launches New ‘Studies in New York Law’ Series
Long before the famous music festival in 1969, Woodstock, New York was home to what is considered one of America’s first intentionally created, year-round arts colony — founded in 1902. Collecting the remarkable range of work produced there has been Arthur A. Anderson’s focus for three decades, resulting in the largest comprehensive assemblage of its type. [Read more…] about The Historic Woodstock Art Colony
Located at 59 West 44th Street in New York’s theatre district, the Algonquin Hotel became an artistic hub for the city and a landmark in America’s cultural life.
It was a meeting place and home away from home for such luminaries as famed wits Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker; Broadway and Hollywood stars, including Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Laughton; popular raconteurs like Robert Benchley; and New York City mayors Jimmy Walker and Fiorello LaGuardia. [Read more…] about The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years With The Legends Who Lunch
Regular New York Almanack contributor Bruce W. Dearstyne’s latest book, Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920 – A Reader (SUNY Press, 2024), provides a firsthand portrait of the progressive era, 1900–1920. This was a time of vast uncertainty and change — with major social and economic developments, including large-scale immigration, industrialization, and urbanization — roiling the nation. [Read more…] about Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920
Have you ever wondered where the Christmas traditions of stockings, presents, and cookies come from?
What about jolly, old Saint Nicholas? Who was he and why do we often call him Santa Claus? [Read more…] about How the Dutch Brought Us Santa, Presents, and Treats
For more than a century, New York City was the brewing capital of America, with more breweries producing more beer than any other city, including Milwaukee and St. Louis.
In Beer of Broadway Fame: The Piel Family and Their Brooklyn Brewery (SUNY Press, 2016,) Alfred W. McCoy traces the hundred-year history of the prominent Brooklyn brewery Piel Bros., and provides an intimate portrait of the company’s German-American family. [Read more…] about Beer of Broadway Fame: The Piel Family of Brooklyn
New York has been a hotbed of innovation since its founding. Made in New York: 25 Innovators Who Shaped Our World (SUNY Press, 2023) by Frank Vizard tells the stories behind the innovators and their inventions.
Like many New Yorkers, some came from elsewhere to find success in their new homes. Others were homegrown. Some became famous; others struggled for recognition. All were visionaries and risk-takers who were willing to put their lives on the line if necessary. [Read more…] about Made in New York: 25 Innovators Who Shaped Our World
At the very worst economic time ever experienced, in 1929 an upstate New York petroleum merchant initiates a shop making and selling discretionary products for a consumer market characterized by 25 percent unemployment.
A few years later, and 15 miles down the same highway from the first, the same optimist opens a second shop. Improbably, the business idea achieves traction. [Read more…] about Craft Becomes Art: 1930s Upstate NY Highway Shops Created the U.S. Craft Movement
From Binghamton to the Battlefield: The Civil War Letters of Rollin B. Truesdell (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2022) draws the reader alongside Rollin B. Truesdell, a prolific letter-writer and an early enlistee in the 27th New York Volunteers, an infantry regiment that was one of the first to form and that was in the thick of some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. [Read more…] about Binghamton to the Battlefield: The Civil War Letters of Rollin B. Truesdell
The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2023) tells the story of Lemmon v. New York — or, as it’s more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history. [Read more…] about The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for FreedomUse your bank’s “bill pay” option (or just send a check)
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