In Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift (Cornell University Press, 2021), Jessica DuLong reveals the dramatic story of how the New York Harbor maritime community heroically delivered stranded commuters, residents, and visitors out of harm's way.
Twenty years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the novel Rockaway Blue(Cornell UP, 2021) probes the griefs, trauma and resilience of Irish American New Yorkers wresting with the deaths and aftershocks of that terrible day. The book weaves throughout New York City, from the Midtown North precinct in Manhattan to Arab American Brooklyn, but it is so grounded in the Irish section of Rockaway in the borough of Queens that Rockaway itself becomes a kind of character.
“Loose Hogs, Fancy Dogs, and Mounds of Manure in the Streets of Manhattan”: An Interview with Catherine McNeur
Interviewed by Amanda Martin-Hardin, Maddy Aubey, and Prem Thakker of the Everyday Environmentalism Podcast
Today on the blog, CatherineMcNeur discusses how during the early 19th century, working class New Yorkers living in Manhattan raised livestock and even practiced a form of recycling by reusing urban waste. Battles over urbanizing and beautifying New York City ensued, involving fights over sanitation and animals in the streets; and how to manage recurring epidemics and diseases like cholera that ravaged the city. McNeur explains how these tensions exacerbated early forms of gentrification in the 19th century, and contemplates how we can learn from the past to create more equitable urban green spaces and shared environmental resources in the future.
The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
Van Gosse interviewed by Jessica Georges
It may be difficult to imagine that a consequential black electoral politics evolved in the United States before the Civil War, for as of 1860, the overwhelming majority of African Americans remained in bondage. Yet free black men, many of them escaped slaves, steadily increased their influence in electoral politics over the course of the early American republic. Despite efforts to disfranchise them, black men voted across much of the North, sometimes in numbers sufficient to swing elections.
The Cat Men of Gotham: An Interview With Peggy Gavan
Interviewed by Robb K. Haberman
Today on the Blog, Gotham editor Robb K. Haberman speaks to journalist and editor Peggy Gavan about her book, The Cat Men of Gotham: Tales of Feline Friendship in Old New York. Gavan discusses the prominent presence and activities of cats in New York City and their interactions with the city’s human residents during a period marked by decades of industrialization, immigration, and urban growth. In telling these stories, Gavan provides unique perspectives on the history of Gotham’s civic, cultural, financial, and social institutions.
Podcast Interview: All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York
Rob Snyder Interviewed by Bruce Cory
All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Robert W. Snyder (Columbia University Press, 2019) covers almost 500 years of New York City’s still unfolding story of cultural diversity and political conflict, economic dynamism and unmatched human diversity.
Podcast Interview: Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York
Edgardo Meléndez Interviewed by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskoff
Edgardo Meléndez's book Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York (Centro Press, 2019) examines the activities and ideals of Puerto Rican revolutionary exiles in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century. The study is centered in the writings, news reports, and announcements by and about Puerto Ricans in Patria, the official newspaper of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Both were founded and led by the Cuban patriot José Martí.
Kara Murphy Schlichting Interviewed by Garrett Reed Gutierrez
In New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore, Kara Murphy Schlichting offers a fresh perspective on New York City’s history by shifting readers’ gaze away from Manhattan and towards the coastal periphery—where local planning initiatives, waterfront park building, the natural environment, and a growing leisure economy each had a stake in the regional development of New York City. Schlichting’s regional and environmental approach frames New York’s extensive waterways as points of connection that unite, rather than divide, the urban core and periphery to one another.
The Chinese Lady: An Interview with Nancy E. Davis
Interviewed by Hongdeng Gao
Today on the blog, editor Hongdeng Gao speaks to Nancy E. Davis about her recent book, The Chinese Lady: Afong Moy in Early America. Through creative use of disparate sources from many years of research, Davis captures the experiences of Afong Moy — the first recognized Chinese woman to arrive in America — as she introduced exotic goods from the East, as well as Chinese life, to the American public. The book provides rich insights into how Afong Moy’s presence changed Americans’ views of China and influenced American popular and material culture. It also sheds light on New York City’s role in the early US-China trade and the rise of the global marketplace.
In the political ferment of early 20th century New York City, when socialists and reformers battled sweatshops, and writers and artists thought a new world was being born, an immigrant Jewish woman from Russia appeared in the Yiddish press, in Carnegie Hall, and at rallies. Her name was Rose Pastor Stokes, and she fought for socialism, contraception and workers’ rights.
