A historical tour of fun and frolic in the five boroughs—including photos from the good old days.Coney Island is an iconic symbol of turn-of-the-century New York—but many other amusement parks have thrilled the residents of the five boroughs.Strategically placed at the end of trolley lines, railways, public beaches, and waterways, these playgrounds for the rich and poor alike first appeared in 1767. From humble beginnings, they developed into huge sites lik...

Did you know a town can vanish? Discover the curious history of five towns nearly lost to history...This is the story of five towns located in New York's Hudson River Valley that met their demise as quickly as they were established. From the icehouses of Rockland Lake to the Ashokan Reservoir towns to the brick quarries of Roseton, only traces of these once vibrant settlements can now be found. Camp Shanks, one of World War II's most significant military compounds,...

Experience the history of America's capitol with this uniquely engaging and informative guidebook.Alternating between site visits and brief historical narratives, this guide tells the story of Washington, DC, from its origins to current times. From George Washington's Mount Vernon to the Kennedy Center, trek through each era of the federal district, on a tour of America's most beloved sites. Go inside the White House, the only executive home in the world regularly ...

The Kingdom of New York is rollicking insider;s history of contemporary New York, as seen through the lens of the city's most irreverent newspaper, the New York Observer. Handsomely designed with great drawings, cartoons, and other illustrations throughout and filled with the paper's unique attention to politics, status, and wealth, this unique insider's view features essays by Cynthia Ozick, Gay Talese, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese, and covers such iconic New York pe...

Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s em...

**Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —**The New York Observer**“The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times“Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mys...

A monumental tale of American ambition, told by Pulitzer Prize–winning author and master historian David McCullough. This gripping saga of the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the country’s boldest engineering achievements, reveals not only the politics and personalities behind "America’s Eiffel Tower," but charts New York’s ascent as a thriving metropolis.Around 1870, during the Age of Optimism—a time when Americans believed anything was possible—the ambiti...

The definitive biography of the iconic skyscrapers and the ambitions that shaped them--from their dizzying rise to their unforgettable fallMore than a year after the nation began mourning the lives lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center, it became clear that something else was being mourned: the towers themselves. They were the biggest and brashest icons that New York, and possibly America, has ever produced--magnificent giants that became intimately familiar around the globe...

In the late 1860s, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) pushed its first tracks westward from Virginia's Tidewater region across the mountains into what was then the new state of West Virginia. Ultimately its tracks stretched across a half-dozen states and even into Canada. Appalachian coal was the C&O's primary cargo, but its fast freights carried shipments of all kinds, and its crack passenger trains were marvels of their day. In 1963, the C&O merged with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad...

Harlem is one of the best-known neighborhoods in the U.S., and it's also one of the nation's most vibrant cultural hubs. Though its reputation has been tarnished at times by economic depressions and crime, its loyal community has created a unique history and culture. Much of this history took place during the twentieth century, which included an influx African American residents, an unparalleled artistic, literary and musical movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, deteriorating economic...

From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, African Americans in the Washington, D.C. area sought leisure destinations where they could relax without the burden of racial oppression. Local picnic parks such as Eureka and Madre's were accessible by streetcars. Black-owned steamboats ferried passengers seeking sun and sand to places like Collingwood Beach, and African American families settled into quiet beach-side communities along the Western Shore of Maryland. Author and public...

The productions of Washington Irving are deservedly held in high estimation, not so much, perhaps, for their intrinsic merits as literary compositions, although in this respect they hold no mean position, as for the inimitable tracings of adventurous life which they display through all their gradations and variety, and for the interest they keep alive in the reader, without outraging nature. Several hundred miles beyond the Mississippi extended a vast tract of uninhabited country, where th...