April 9, 2025

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine’s Misdiagnosis of the Potential of Ward’s Island

Philip T. Yanos

Philip T.Yanos details the misinterpretation of Ward’s Island’s potential, advocating for housing solutions over increased hospitalization for mental health.

November 22, 2022

Joseph Mitchell’s Human Interest in the Fulton Fish Market

Jonathan H. Rees

During lockdown, when I wasn’t teaching history online, I read old newspaper and magazine articles about the Fulton Fish Market—hundreds of them, if not several thousand. These stories form the core of my new history of that New York City...

June 19, 2022

Seneca Village and Fair Compensation

What the Archives Reveal

Sara Cedar Miller

“This book is incomplete without finding those documents. They have to exist!” This became my constant lament to the guardians of New York City’s archives and especially to the ever-patient and all-knowing archivist Ken Cobb, the assistant commissioner of the...

March 15, 2022

Nancy Woloch on The Insider: A Life of Virginia C. Gildersleeve

As dean of Barnard College from 1911–1947, Virginia C. Gildersleeve promoted the value of the liberal arts, defended women’s intellectual capacities, and filled a leading role in higher education. She also sought a role in foreign policy. At the peak...

October 12, 2021

Q&A: Thomas Heise on The Gentrification Plot

For decades, crime novelists have set their stories in New York City, a place long famed for decay, danger, and intrigue. What happens when the mean streets of the city are no longer quite so mean? In this Q&A, Thomas...

January 9, 2021

Hubert Harrison and Contemporary Struggles for Racial Equality

By Jeffrey B. Perry

“This long-awaited final volume guides us through the last decade of Harrison’s life, when he played a major role in the political upheavals and cultural transformations that shaped Harlem in the wake of the First World War. Thanks to Perry’s...

November 24, 2020

New Book Tuesday! Notre-Dame of Amiens, The Arab and Jewish Questions, and Hubert Harrison

Our weekly list of new books is now available! Notre-Dame of Amiens Life of the Gothic Cathedral Stephen Murray A beautifully illustrated account of a grand, historically and religiously important building from a variety of perspectives and in a variety...

September 30, 2020

Evan Friss on Bicycling Through the Pandemic

“In On Bicycles, Evan Friss fills in the missing chapters that bicycles hold in New York City’s near-miraculous transportation history and shows how the city’s streets are finally catching up with them.” ~!Janette Sadik-Khan, Bloomberg Associates, former NYC transportation commissioner Today...

September 28, 2020

Martin V. Melosi on Garbage and Climate Change

“Fresh Kills frames Staten Island’s iconic landfill as not just a repository for solid waste but also a monument to consumer culture. This is an immensely readable and valuable book by a distinguished scholar of environmental history.” ~Michael Rawson, author...

August 21, 2020

Book Excerpt! Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, edited by Ansley T. Erickson and Ernest Morrell

 “An outstanding collection of cutting-edge essays, Educating Harlem rewrites the narrative of twentieth-century urban education. Eschewing a single thesis or grand narrative, this groundbreaking volume shows the creativity, debate, fierce love, and impassioned determination of a community to make...

August 19, 2020

Book Excerpt! Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an After-Hours Club, by Terry Williams (introduction)

“Terry Williams has already established himself as a master of gaining access to hard-to-reach, hidden, and vulnerable populations. He has done so again here, giving an in-depth look at a place with which most people will be totally unfamiliar in...

August 18, 2020

Video: Lance Freeman on “What makes Harlem Special?”

 “In A Haven and a Hell, Lance Freeman seeks to amplify the relationship between ‘the ghetto’ as a place, policy, and idea and as a black experience, source of resistance, and community. Using multiple places and narratives, this book...