Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug

Reviewed by Dylan Gottlieb

“She is loud. She is good and rude,” wrote Jimmy Breslin, the redoubtable New York newspaperman. Like “a fighter in training,” he continued, Bella Abzug was “pushing, brawling, poking, striding her way toward the Congress of the United States.” In the 1970s, as New York approached its nadir, Abzug emerged onto the political scene as a pugilist for the people: a “tough broad from the Bronx” (to borrow the title of another biography), whose combative style and populist message fit the tough times.

Politics, ReviewsGuest UserJune 2, 2020Comment

A Murky Mess of Monuments in Crisis New York

By Todd Fine

Gonzalo Casals, New York City's new commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), begins work this week after recovering from the coronavirus. Hired to replace Tom Finkelpearl, who resigned after repeated controversies over an ambitious effort to build at least a dozen new historical monuments, Casals was tasked to bring the initiative to the "finish line” in the remaining twenty months of Mayor Bill de Blasio's second and final term.

Arts & Culture, Contemporary Era, PoliticsGuest UserMay 7, 2020Comment

Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789

Reviewed by Jonathan W. Wilson

Have pity for John Holt. He lived in perilous times. As the publisher of the New-York Journal, and as a centrally located postmaster, Holt was poised to play an important role in the American Revolution. His evident sympathies were with the patriots. But he had to be careful.

Reviews, American Revolution, Business & Labor, British Era, Early Republic, PoliticsGuest UserApril 9, 2020Comment

The Lawyer and the Fox: A Tale of Tricks and Treachery in New Amsterdam

By Jaap Jacobs

Historians of New Netherland have largely viewed Adriaen van der Donck positively, portraying him as a conduit for enlightened Dutch tolerance into North America. But this image of Adriaen van der Donck is hard to reconcile with the historical record. In fact, many aspects of his life point the other way. Van der Donck’s exile from Breda, his marriage to a daughter of a puritan minister from England, and his continuing membership of the Calvinist church suggest that his engagement in colonial projects stemmed from religious motives very like other New England colonists: the desire to create a safe haven overseas, free from persecution. If so, Van der Donck entertained religious ideas quite similar to those of Petrus Stuyvesant.

New Amsterdam, PoliticsGuest UserApril 2, 2020Comment

Greater New Yorker: George McAneny, the Dual System and the Making of Greater New York

By Lucie Levine

On March 19, 1913, at the offices of the New York State Public Service Commission, in the New York Tribune Building at Nassau Street and Park Row, a group of city administrators and transit tycoons signed the “Dual Contracts,” a landmark deal between the City of New York, and the IRT and BRT subway companies, to vastly expand the city’s subway network. The Dual System was the largest single public works initiative in American history up to that time. It doubled the size of the subway network and tripled its capacity, made possible the development of the outer boroughs, and allowed for the unprecedented growth of an unparalleled city.

Transportation, Urban Planning, PoliticsGuest UserFebruary 4, 2020Comment

Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot

Reviewed by Susan Goodier

Just when we thought there simply couldn’t be another thing to say about the New York women’s suffrage movement, Lauren Santangelo presents us with an immaculately researched, well-written book that adds a new and provocative dimension to the topic. At the center of this monograph is New York City itself, with its myriad public spaces and its fascinating complexity, and Santangelo draws us into her rendition of suffragism in the city that never sleeps. Suffrage and the City does not presume to replace the historiography of the movement, but it raises the bar for casting a wide net for sources, for contextualization of a social movement, and for bringing a historical period (in this case, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era) to life. She convincingly argues that the city—Manhattan in particular—is more than a setting; it is an essential part of the drama of the women’s suffrage movement.

Gender & Sexuality, Politics, Progressive Era, ReviewsGuest UserAugust 22, 2019Comment

Bad Faith: Teachers, Liberalism, and the Origins of McCarthyism

Reviewed by Clarence Taylor

For decades, pundits, conservative writers, and political officials have obscured the political and ideological differences between liberals, democratic socialists and communists. It is quite common for both rightwing Republicans and those in the mainstream media to label liberals as the “far Left,” in order to imply their ideas pose a danger to the country. In the 1988 presidential election, for example, George H. W. Bush called his Democratic opponent, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, a “card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union,” equating membership in the ACLU with membership in the Communist Party. Several Republicans and members of the Tea Party have accused former President Barack Obama of being a “socialist.” President Donald Trump has labeled Democrats as “radicals” who have adopted a “far-left agenda.”

Business & Labor, Education, Politics, Postwar New York, ReviewsGuest UserAugust 20, 2019Comment

“HORRID BARBARITY:” A Trial Against Slaveholders in New York City

By Kelly A. Ryan

In February 1809, three seamstresses made their way to the special justices of New York City to register a complaint against their employers for abusing the slaves living in their household. They charged Amos and Demiss Broad, a married couple who ran an upholstery and millinery business in the second ward of New York City, with a litany of abuses, including throwing a knife at a three-year-old child. An unlikely trial occurred at the Court of General Sessions by the end of the month, in which the Broads stood trial for assaulting Betty and her three-year-old daughter Sarah. Ultimately, nine witnesses came forward against the Broads, and two of the witnesses who originally agreed to provide evidence for the Broads ended up supporting the prosecution. Though the employees and neighbors of the Broads would be critical to pushing this case forward, Betty’s efforts to get help forced New York City to reckon with the cruelty of slaveholding. The case against the Broads would be a stunning victory for African Americans and the New York Society for the Manumission of Slaves (NYMS), as well as an important moment in generating discussions about the rights of slaves to live unmolested.

Antebellum & Civil War, Manhattan, Politics, Race & EthnicityGuest UserAugust 8, 2019Comment

The 51st State: Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, and the Politics of Imagination

By Gabe S. Tennen

It was early April in 1969, and Norman Mailer, holding court on the top floor of his Brooklyn Heights brownstone, was in his element. Surrounding the forty-six-year-old author, social commentator, and rabble-rouser were an array of the city’s writers, activists, and politicos, and, probably to the liking of the notoriously egotistical Mailer, the topic of the night concerned him.

After the Vote: Feminist Politics in La Guardia's New York

Reviewed by Karen Pastorello

Elisabeth Israels Perry has enriched the historical record by documenting New York City women’s activism in the first half of the twentieth century. Inspired by the life of her grandmother, “political influencer” and civic reformer Belle Linder Israels Moskowitz, Perry goes well beyond recounting “firsts” for women and instead offers specific examples of accomplished women — all of whom surmounted a myriad of personal and professional challenges to enter a male-controlled political world. After suffrage was won, women attempted to ascend from their newly acquired position as voters to officeholders intent, for the most part, on advancing a social justice platform for all.

Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug

A Murky Mess of Monuments in Crisis New York

Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789

The Lawyer and the Fox: A Tale of Tricks and Treachery in New Amsterdam

Greater New Yorker: George McAneny, the Dual System and the Making of Greater New York

Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot

Reviewed by Susan Goodier

Bad Faith: Teachers, Liberalism, and the Origins of McCarthyism

Reviewed by Clarence Taylor

“HORRID BARBARITY:” A Trial Against Slaveholders in New York City

By Kelly A. Ryan

The 51st State: Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, and the Politics of Imagination​

By Gabe S. Tennen

After the Vote: Feminist Politics in La Guardia's New York

Reviewed by Karen Pastorello

The 51st State: Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, and the Politics of Imagination