From roughly 1850 to 1950, Fulton Market would dominate wholesale fish provisioning in the United States and much of the country’s fish would pass through Fulton…As the market supplied itself from more distant locales, Fulton’s ecological impact widened. … wholesalers had to look further and further away and develop more and more complex means of preserving and moving fish. … the length and complexity of this process served to obscure the ecological impact of food—consumer appetites were, after all, destroying ecosystems a world away.
The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn: An American Story
Reviewed by Jon Butler
Between the Civil War and 1900, "old" Brooklyn both prospered and declined. Real estate developers and the new Brooklyn Bridge swelled Brooklyn's tony neighborhoods with middling and upper-class commuters to Manhattan….The New York Times may have been condescending when it labelled Brooklyn "that moral suburb" before the Brooklyn Bridge dedication, as Blumin and Altschuler put it. But it hadn't missed the Protestants' aim.
The fire, which came on the heels of the British conquest of lower Manhattan island, killed hundreds, burned about a fifth of the buildings in the city, and created long-lasting housing and food crises for thousands of civilians and soldiers. In the aftermath, British, Continental, and New York authorities blamed one another for the conflagration as ordinary people sought to recoup their losses, rebuild their lives, and take advantage of opportunities opened by the destruction. . . The Great New York Fire of 1776 makes us rethink many of our assumptions about the American Revolution and New York City’s role in it.
Sodomites and Gender Transgressors In 1840s New York
Marc Stein, interviewed by Katie Uva
We have ample evidence of queer acts and desires, but not gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans identities and communities, in colonial America or the United States before the late 1800s. That’s part of what makes this set of documents from the 1840s so interesting and so significant — they might allow us to push back the clock on when such identities and communities emerged in the United States…. these sources capture widespread cultural anxieties about the genders and sexualities of young white men and the new pleasures and dangers of life in urban America.
The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America
Reviewed by Carolyn Eastman
It isn’t easy to read the story of a seventeen-year-old girl from a modest family raped by a wealthy and politically well-connected man. Making it even harder to read is the fact that when she chose to charge him with the crime, he and his lawyers accused her of lying, promiscuity, and greed. …The Sewing Girl’s Tale doesn’t hold back … the horrific implications of the crime, nor from tracking the painful modern-day resonances of this story… a powerful narrative about early New York City chockablock with extraordinary details drawn from an enormous range of archival and literary sources, a story that only becomes more compelling over the course of the book… for those of us fascinated by the history of New York, this book is irresistible.
David Grim’s Fairy Tale: The New York City Fire in Myth
By Benjamin L. Carp
On September 21, 1776, a fifth of New York City burned to the ground... But for almost 250 years, most New York City historians either ignored the Great Fire… or argued for its unimportance. They assumed that the fire was caused either by accident or by apolitical miscreants, and they chose to diminish the reports of outraged eyewitnesses who believed the fire was deliberate… most Americans never heard this story, then or since…
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots that Shook New York City
Reviewed by Aaron Welt
With The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902, Scott D. Seligman offers the first book-length treatment of the campaign of Jewish housewives against the “Beef Trust.” … Seligman provides a highly readable chronology of the events between May and June of 1902 that, at the time, earned the title of “a modern Jewish Boston Tea Party” and, later, the Kosher Meat Boycott. He succeeds in bringing to life the largely forgotten and primarily female leaders of the consumer campaign, their roles within the collective effort to bring down the price of kosher beef, the internal divisions that developed, and their significance for American Jews.
The work that historians do influences their lives, especially if they spend a considerable time in a foreign land that they write about. Slowly, their topic of choice becomes an essential part of their identity. Here, Russell Shorto, the renowned writer of narrative history, writes about his own evolution at the intersection of Dutch-American history.
Bob Dylan first set foot in the Village in 1961, and even as he continues to make music, you can argue that his Greenwich Village years in the 1960s were a formative period in his life and work. Dick Weissman’s new book, Bob Dylan’s New York: A Historic Guide, published by the State University of New York Press, helps fans and students of Dylan walk the streets where his career took off.
Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession
By Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
In her new book, spanning more than a century of American history, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela explores the work of working out not just as consumers have experienced it, but as it was created by performers, physical educators, trainers, instructors, and many others. Examining venues from the stage of the World’s Fair and Muscle Beach to fat farms, feminist health clinics, radical and evangelical college campuses, yoga retreats, gleaming health clubs, school gymnasiums, and many more, Fit Nation is a revealing history that shows fitness to be not just a matter of physical health but of what it means to be an American.
