A book guaranteed to enlighten and entertain anyone interested in NYC.
A journalist who has covered New York City for more than 50 years offers a potpourri of stories about some of the city’s overlooked residents during four centuries of history.
America’s largest and most polyglot city is impossible to bring into crystal-clear focus, but this book makes it come alive. Although not all of Roberts’ figures are stellar humans, he succeeds in his quest to rescue New York’s “unheralded heroes, men and women whose roles were largely overlooked or, at best, survive as a footnote.” Writing with delightful verve, the author creates a narrative that falls somewhere between a rogues’ gallery and a pantheon of extraordinary people. Opening with a murder and closing with an inspirational neighborhood leader, the text is filled with a full range of NYC characters, the already well-known ones playing only walk-on roles. We learn about Revolutionary firebrand Isaac Sears; African American oyster restaurateur Thomas Downing; Bishop John Hughes, a champion of Catholic schooling; attorney Charles O’Conor, who brought down Boss Tweed; Elizabeth Jennings, who protested discrimination on public transport 100 years before Rosa Parks; Charles Dowd, creator of standard time zones; the Bradley-Martins, the city’s most extravagant and clueless 19th-century couple; Clara Lemlich, early-20th-century labor firebrand; Ciro Terranova, the “Artichoke King” and crime-family mobster; Audrey Munson, “America’s first supermodel”; Jack Maple (whose sketch is the most amusing tale), the transit cop who invented the crime-mapping Compstat system; and Carmelia Goffe, an unsung heroine of the revival of her Brownsville neighborhood in the 1970s and beyond. Perhaps fittingly, the book feels like a New Deal painting you spot in post offices: a panorama of all kinds of New Yorkers doing their best to either improve the world or take advantage of it. The author readily admits his subjectivity, wryly noting that “ ‘The Biography’ might have required 923,380,602 chapters, if you accept that figure as the number of people who ever lived in New York.”
A book guaranteed to enlighten and entertain anyone interested in NYC.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62040-978-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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