Morton Feldman: Friendship and Mourning in the New York Avant-Garde
Reviewed by Greg Barnhisel
This portrait of the personal relationships among the artists of the New York School in Ryan Dohoney’s book is sophisticated and sensitive, giving us both a new historical view of these figures and new ways of understanding their works.
Podcast Special: Visiting New York City's Presidents
By Ryan Purcell
Gotham blog editor Ryan Purcell joins the historians Joe Faykosh and Thomas J. Balcerski for a jaunt through lower Manhattan in this special edition of the podcast “Visiting the Presidents” on New York City.
Boukary Sawadogo’s book Africans in Harlem: An Untold New York Story resonated with me as an African migrant living in Harlem. From the introductory section, “Africa in Harlem,” to the conclusion of the last chapter, “Searching for Africa in the Diaspora,” the writer allowed me to understand the genesis, formation, and growth of this community.
In 1988, director Elia Kazan recalled a story in which he and Broadway scenic designer Boris Aronson drove cross-country together on a research trip for their latest theatrical collaboration. According to Kazan, as they entered New Mexico, Aronson pointed to a single tree growing atop a chain of hills barren of any other vegetation and said, “Without this tree, these hills would not exist.” As single elements, neither the tree nor the hills attract notice. But when taken together, it is the tree that draws the eye to the hills, bringing them into focus, making them relevant.
(Podcast) Stephanie Azzarone, Heaven on the Hudson
Interviewed by Robert W. Snyder
On the west side of Manhattan, Riverside Park winds between the banks of the Hudson River and the elegant housing of Riverside Drive. In her new book Heaven on the Hudson: Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park(Fordham UP, 2022), Stephanie Azzarone seeks to lift the park and its surroundings from the shadows of more famous places, like Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and Central Park West.
It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic
Reviewed By Ivan Bujan
In a recent conversation with my students in my undergraduate course that explores the politics of pleasure, the class reaffirmed my belief that the current US sex education still gives little practical information about sex and sexuality, largely reinforcing the Victorian myths about abstinence, monogamy, and reproduction. One student had not heard about HIV/AIDS or its history before coming to college. Only a few had heard about Gran Fury and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and their importance in the history of contemporary politics of sexuality.
Dutch-American Stories: On the First Dutch Translation of the U.S. Constitution
By Michael Douma
There are a few topics that guarantee a historian an audience. Write a decent biography of Abraham Lincoln or James Madison, for example, and you are bound to have readers. Or, write something new and interesting about the Constitution and you might attract some attention.
“Fellow Citizens Too”: Puerto Ricans and Migration Politics in the New York Amsterdam News, 1954
By Daniel Acosta Elkan
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on the members of the House of Representatives from the gallery of the body’s chamber in Washington DC. This was but the most dramatic event in an important year for the Puerto Rican diaspora, and its effects were felt in profoundly local ways. In East Harlem, the most prominent stateside Boricua community, the FBI conducted a number of raids on bars, restaurants, and other community spaces. The New York Amsterdam News, the city’s leading Black newspaper, reported that “Negroes and Puerto Ricans are reportedly being rounded up, searched, and subjected to other indignities.”
All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough
Reviewed by Katie Uva
In a sense, emphasizing the vernacular architecture of New York City as quintessential to its character is the project undertaken by Rafael Herrin-Ferri in All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough. The book is an outgrowth of his Instagram, which since 2018 has cataloged more than 600 domiciles throughout different parts of Queens and attempted to describe their incredible eclecticism and flamboyance. The book features a little over 200 houses, photographed on uniformly cloudy days and from a standard angle across the street, usually incorporating neighboring houses to highlight contrasts between houses on a single block.
New Ways to Understand Robert Moses: An Interview with Katie Uva and Kara Murphy Schlichting
By Robert W. Snyder
If you teach courses on New York City’s history, or just have a passing interest in its past, you are sure to come across Robert A. Caro’s biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Published in 1974, it remains influential and informs an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, echoes into David Hare’s new play Straight Line Crazy, and appears conspicuously in Zoom conversations on the bookshelves of politicians and journalists.
