History, Natural History & the Arts
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history.
Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. [Read more…] about Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and Remaking the Bronx
Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025) by Molly Beer is a women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church (1756-1814), the eldest daughter of General Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer.
The Van Rensselaers of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck were one of the wealthiest and most politically influential families in what was then the still heavily Dutch-influenced Province of New York. [Read more…] about Angelica Schuyler Church: A Woman at the Center of Revolution
During his seven-decade career in public life, George Sewall Boutwell sought to “redeem America’s promise” of racial equality, economic equity, and the principled use of American power abroad.
From 1840 to 1905, Boutwell was at the center of efforts to abolish slavery, establish the Republican Party, assist President Lincoln in funding the Union war effort, facilitate Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, impeach President Andrew Johnson, and frame and enact the Fourteenth and Fifteenth civil rights amendments. [Read more…] about George Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy
In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their arch-rivals, the Dutch, were in the way.
But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general. [Read more…] about Russell Shorto’s New Book ‘Taking Manhattan’ Published
When ecologist Carl Safina and his wife Patricia took in a near-death baby owl, they expected that, like other wild orphans they’d rescued, she’d be a temporary presence. But Alfie’s feathers were not growing correctly, requiring prolonged care.
As Alfie grew and gained strength, she became a part of the family, joining a menagerie of dogs and chickens and making a home for herself in the backyard. Carl and Patricia began to realize that the healing was mutual; Alfie had been braided into their world and was now pulling them into hers. [Read more…] about Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe
Leaders of the founding of the United States who called for American liberty are scrutinized for enslaving Black people themselves: George Washington consistently refused to recognize the freedom of those who escaped his Mount Vernon plantation. And we have long needed a history of the founding that fully includes Black Americans in the Revolutionary protests, the war, and the debates over slavery and freedom that followed. [Read more…] about Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795
From their early days on the North American continent, the Livingston family were a prominent sex-trade family. In a nutshell, they were landlords to brothel-operators from at least as early as the 1810s.
New York State Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, who reluctantly joined the patriot side of the American Revolution in 1776. Chancellor Robert was one of many Livingstons who profited from the sex trade in the aftermath of the unrest. [Read more…] about Pirates, Prostitution & The Livingston Family
Decades before she took her fabled name, abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth was born enslaved in Ulster County, NY under the name Isabella. It was as Isabella that the young Truth took action to secure the return of her five-year son Peter, who had been illegally sold to in plantation in Alabama.
With the help of local attorneys, Isabella filed a Habeas Corpus Petition in the Ulster County Courthouse in March of 1828. And it was this Isabella that prevailed on that Petition for her son’s freedom, marking the first time in American history that a Black woman sued a white man – and won. (You can read about that here). [Read more…] about Sojourner Truth Documents Going On View In Kingston
The New York State Archives Partnership Trust is set to honor author and historian Annette Gordon-Reed the 2021 Empire State Archives and History Award on May 18, both virtually and in person, at the University Club of Albany. [Read more…] about Annette Gordon-Reed To Receive Empire State Archives and History Award
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 is deeply rooted in early American history. In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Claudio Saunt, author of the book Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (W.W. Norton, 2020), joins us to discuss the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and how Native Americans in the southeastern part of the United States were removed from their homelands and resettled in areas of southeastern Kansas and Oklahoma. [Read more…] about History of the Indian Removal Act of 1830
When we think of important years in the history of the American Revolution, we might think of years like 1765 and the Stamp Act Crisis, 1773 and the Tea Crisis, 1775 and the start of what would become the War for American Independence, or 1776, the year the United States declared independence.
[Read more…] about 1774: The Long Year of Revolution (Podcast)
The new book 1774: The Long Year of Revolution (Knopf, 2020) by Mary Beth Norton keenly focuses on the sixteen months during which the traditional loyalists to King George III began their discordant “discussions” that led to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire and to the clashes at Lexington and Concord in mid-April 1775. [Read more…] about 1774: The Long Year of Revolution
Fran Leadon’s new book Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles (W. W. Norton & Co, 2018) takes a mile-by-mile look at Broadway that traces the gradual evolution of the seventeenth-century’s Brede Wegh, a muddy cow path in a backwater Dutch settlement, to the twentieth century’s Great White Way.
Readers can learn why one side of the street was once considered more fashionable than the other; view construction of the Ansonia Apartments, Trinity Church, and the Flatiron Building and the burning of P. T. Barnum’s American Museum; and discover that Columbia University was built on the site of an insane asylum. [Read more…] about Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles
How much can the work of one historian impact how we view and study the American Revolution?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History, we investigate the answer to this question by exploring the life and work of Pauline Maier, a historian who spent her life researching and investigating the American Revolution. Over the course of her lifetime, Maier wrote four important books about the American Revolution: From Resistance to Revolution (Knopf, 1973), The Old Revolutionaries (Knopf, 1980), American Scripture (Knopf, 1997), and Ratification (Simon & Schuster, 2010).
Mary Beth Norton, Joanne Freeman, Todd Estes, and Lindsay Chervinsky join us as we journey through Maier’s body of work to better understand the American Revolution and how one historian can impact how we view and study history. You can listen to the podcast here: www.benfranklinsworld.com/155
Historians often portray the American Revolution as an orderly, if violent, event that moved from British colonists’ high-minded ideas about freedom to American independence from Great Britain and the ratification of the Constitution of 1787.
But was the American Revolution an orderly event that took place only between Great Britain and her North American colonists? Was it really about high-minded ideas?
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor joins us on Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History to explore the American Revolution as a Continental event with details from his book, American Revolutions: A Continental History. 1750-1804 (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016). You can listen to the podcast here: www.benfranklinsworld.com/128
[Read more…] about American Revolutions: A Continental History
Twelve Years A Slave (W.W. Norton Critical Edition, 2017) offers the autobiography of Solomon Northup, based on the 1853 first edition. It is accompanied by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kevin Burke’s introduction and detailed explanatory footnotes.
Solomon Northup was a New York State-born free African-American man who was kidnapped in Washington, DC, in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before his release. [Read more…] about New Critical Edition of ‘Twelve Years a Slave’
On December 16, 1773, the colonists of Boston threw 342 chests of English East India Company tea into Boston Harbor, an act we remember as the “Boston Tea Party.”
Have you ever wondered what drove the Bostonians to destroy the tea? Or whether they considered any other less destructive options for their protest?
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University, takes us through the Tea Crisis of 1773. You can listen here: benfranklinsworld.com/112
[Read more…] about Ben Franklin’s World: The Tea Crisis of 1773
What can the life of an artist reveal about the American Revolution and how most American men and women experienced it?
The Ben Franklin’s World podcast explores the life and times of John Singleton Copley with Jane Kamensky, a Professor of History at Harvard University and the author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (W.W. Norton & Co, 2016) You can listen to the podcast here: www.benfranklinsworld.com/106
Art Deco Mailboxes: An Illustrated Design History (W.W Norton & Co., 2015) by Karen Greene and Lynne Lavelle features a full-color photographic survey of early mailboxes, located in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and beyond. Many of these mailboxes have since been removed, forgotten, disused, or painted over, others are still in use, are polished daily, and hold a place of pride in lobbies throughout the country.
As American art deco architecture flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, mailboxes and their chutes became focal points in landmark buildings and public spaces such as the GE Building, Grand Central Terminal, the Woolworth Building, 29 Broadway, the St. Regis Hotel, the Waldorf Astoria, and more. [Read more…] about Art Deco Mailboxes: An Illustrated History
Robert B. MacKay’s new book Gardens of Eden: Long Island’s Early Twentieth Century Planned Communities (2015, W.W Norton & Co.) examines Long Island at the turn of the twentieth century, and how it saw an explosion of architectural ambition.
Well-known for the country houses that bloomed through the Progressive Era as seasonal havens for the captains of New York finance and industry, Long Island also afforded people of more modest means the opportunity to strike out from the city.
Gardens of Eden tells the story of Long Island’s “residential parks,” richly gardened suburbs with such distinctive directives as the exclusive housing of teachers, public outreach by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a taboo on right-angled intersections. [Read more…] about Gardens of Eden: Long Island’s Planned Communities
Use your bank’s “bill pay” option (or just send a check)
Thanks for your support! These are difficult times. Without your support we cannot publish the Almanack.
*Donations are not tax deductible.
(Click the X in the top right corner this box to not see this message again for 7 days).