When the 13 colonies declared their independence from the British, the area of Queens that eventually became Laurelton consisted of woodlands, ponds, and farms. This rural community gained some recognition when an attempt to build an upscale housing development for wealthy New Yorkers failed, but left in its place an elegant, new Long Island Railroad Station named �Laurelton.� In 1929, the stock market crash and Depression led New Yorkers to the discovery that home ownership was a thrifty ...

Fought amid rocks and trees, in thick blinding smoke, and under exceedingly stressful conditions, the battle for the southern slope of Little Round Top on July 2, 1863 stands among the most famous and crucial military actions in American history, one of the key engagements that led to the North's victory at Gettysburg. In this powerfully narrated history, Maine historian Tom Desjardin tells the story of the 20th Maine Regiment, the soldiers who fought and won the battle of Little Round Top...

A brilliant, sweeping, and unparalleled look at the extraordinarily rich culture and turbulent politics of New York City between the years 1945 and 1950, The Brazen Age opens with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign tour through the city’s boroughs in 1944. He would see little of what made New York the capital of modernity—though the aristocratic FDR was its paradoxical avatar—a city boasting an unprecedented and unique synthesis of genius, ambition, and the avant-garde. While co...

Not long after Adam Gopnik returned to New York at the end of 2000 with his wife and two small children, they witnessed one of the great and tragic events of the city’s history. In his sketches and glimpses of people and places, Gopnik builds a portrait of our altered New York: the changes in manners, the way children are raised, our plans for and accounts of ourselves, and how life moves forward after tragedy. Rich with Gopnik’s signature charm, wit, and joie de vivre, here is th...

The true story of a childhood spent in multiple religious institutions in postwar Brooklyn—and what it was like to enter the larger world as an adult.In 1946, Edward Rohs was left by his unwed parents at the Angel Guardian Home to be raised by the Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters hoped his parents would one day return for him. In time they married and had other children, but Ed's parents never came back for him—and never signed the legal papers so he could be adopted ...

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...

The site now occupied by the city of New York is pre-eminently "Revolutionary soil." Very few of our historic places are more closely associated with the actual scenes of that struggle. As at Boston in 1775, so here in 1776, we had the war at our doors and all about us. In the present volume the record of what has occured is given as a single connected account, with many additional particulars which have come to light. This material, gathered largely from the descendants of officers and so...

Mansfield Township was established as a constabulary in 1688 and became incorporated in 1798. It is one of the oldest townships in Burlington County. Made up of one town, Columbus, and the four villages of Hedding, Kinkora, Georgetown, and Mansfield Square, the township continues to retain the rural, agricultural landscape that its first settlers witnessed. Mansfield Township has had a number of notable residents, from Prince Lucian Murat, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, to Thomas Larzelere,...

Spanish Harlem�s musical development thrived between the 1930s and 1980s in New York City. This area was called El Barrio by its inhabitants and Spanish Harlem by all others. It was a neighborhood where musicians from the Caribbean or their descendants organized musical groups, thereby adding to the diaspora that began in Africa and Spain. The music now called salsa had its roots in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo, and it continued developing onanother island: Manhattan.

From Fantasy Island to Darien Lake, Western New York's 100 year amuseument park history is documented in this fast-paced photographic tale. For more than 100 years, western New Yorkers have enjoyed the region's exciting amusement parks. During the days of trolleys and steamships, area businessmen created Celoron Park, Crystal Beach Park, and other fine local summer resorts. Decades later, lifelong memories were formed for neighborhood baby boomers who visited Glen Park and Fantasy Island, ...

In 1803, when Charles Johnson and his brother Oliver left their family in Cayuga County to move west to the Boston Valley, they brought their pioneer spirit and strength with them to an untouched wilderness. The valley was a serene meadow, and the hills surrounding it were perfect for farming and raising cattle and sheep. As others came with their families, the wilderness became tame, and the town grew as the community built harness shops, cheese factories, sawmills, and schools. In the ye...

In Who Should Rule at Home? Joyce D. Goodfriend argues that the high-ranking gentlemen who figure so prominently in most accounts of New York City's evolution from 1664, when the English captured the small Dutch outpost of New Amsterdam, to the eve of American independence in 1776 were far from invincible and that the degree of cultural power they held has been exaggerated. The urban elite experienced challenges to its cultural au...