To many, Newark seems a profound symbol of postwar liberalism’s failings: an impoverished, deeply divided city where commitments to integration and widespread economic security went up in flames during the 1967 riots. While it’s true that these failings shaped Newark’s postwar landscape and economy, as Mark Krasovic shows, that is far from the whole story.The Newark Frontier shows how, during the Great Society, urban liberalism adapted and grew, defining itself less by cen...

How much do you actually know about New York City? Did you know they tried to anchor Zeppelins at the top of the Empire State Building? Or that the high-rent district of Park Avenue was once so dangerous it was called “Death Avenue”? This lively and comprehensive guidebook brings New York’s fascinating past to vivid life.This narrative history of New York City is the first to offer practical walking tour know-how. Fast-paced but thorough, its bite-size chapters eac...

**Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeFeaturing a foreword by Battle Cry of Freedom author James McPhersonA vibrant portrait of Civil War-era Washington, D.C. that is “packed and running over with the anecdotes, scandals, personalities, and tragi-comedies of the day”—from the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for History (The New Yorker)**1860: The American capital is sprawling, fractured, squalid, colored by patriotism and treason, and deeply divided a...

In the years after World War II, Georgetown’s leafy streets were home to an unlikely group of Cold Warriors who helped shape American strategy. This coterie of affluent, well-educated, and connected civilians guided the country, for better and worse, from the Marshall Plan through McCarthyism, Watergate, and Vietnam. The Georgetown set included Phil and Kay Graham, husband-and-wife publishers of The Washington Post; Joe and Stewart Alsop, odd-couple brothers who were among the cou...

For decades, leaders in Newark, New Jersey, have claimed their city is about to return to its vibrant past. How accurate is this prediction? Is Newark on the verge of revitalization? Robert Curvin, who was one of New Jersey’s outstanding civil rights leaders, examines the city, chronicling its history, politics, and culture*.* Throughout the pages of Inside Newark, Curvin approaches his story both as an insider who is rooting for Newark and as an objective social scientist illumin...

PULITZER PRIZE FINALISTAn epic, riveting history of New York City on the edge of disaster—and an anatomy of the austerity politics that continue to shape the world todayWhen the news broke in 1975 that New York City was on the brink of fiscal collapse, few believed it was possible. How could the country's largest metropolis fail? How could the capital of the financial world go bankrupt? Yet the city was indeed billions of dollars in the red, with no way to pa...

In the early morning of September 8, 1755, a force of French Regulars, Canadians and Indians crouched unseen in a ravine south of Lake George.Under the command of French general Jean-Armand, Baron de Dieskau, the men ambushed the approaching British forces, sparking a bloody conflict for control of the lake and its access to New York's interior. Against all odds, British commander William Johnson rallied his men through the barrage of enemy fire to send the French ...

"This is the book that political science professors and editorial writers should read before they write their learned sermons about the evils of Tammany Hall. The authors write with love and sadness about 'contracts,' pols on the take, pouring water from rooftops onto Socialist candidates, and spitting in the face of Jimmy Walker because Irish cops were pushing around Jewish storekeepers. This is the way New York looked from a red brick clubhouse on East Broadway."—Richard Reeves, New York...

Stories of Newark’s postwar decline are easy to find. But in The Fixers, Julia Rabig supplements these tales of misery with the story of the many imaginative challenges to the city’s decline mounted by Newark’s residents and suburban neighbors. In these pages, we meet the black nationalists whose dynamic organizing elected African American candidates in unprecedented numbers. There are tenants who mounted a historic rent strike to transform public housing and renegade white Cathol...

On an Oxford bound train in 1866 Mary Miles refused to move to the 'blacks-only' section, eighty-nine years before Rosa Parks' famous ride. Eight years later in a West Chester courtroom photographic evidence was used for the first time. Soon after that the hills of Westtown became the testing grounds for the Flexible Flyer, America's original steerable sled. These are among the extraordinary stories too often lost to Chester County's history. From the humorous tale of the goat that ate a s...

Proposing an entirely new governance model to unleash innovation throughout local governmentAt a time when trust is dropping precipitously and American government at the national level has fallen into a state of long-term, partisan-based gridlock, local government can still be effective-indeed more effective and even more responsive to the needs of its citizens. Based on decades of direct experience and years studying successful models around the world, the authors ...

On September 10, 1813, the hot, still air that hung over Lake Erie was broken by the sounds of sharp conflict. Led by Oliver Hazard Perry, the American fleet met the British, and though they sustained heavy losses, Perry and his men achieved one of the most stunning victories in the War of 1812. Author Walter Rybka traces the Lake Erie Campaign from the struggle to build the fleet in Erie, Pennsylvania, during the dead of winter and the conflict between rival egos of Perry and his second i...