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Book Displays: Summer in NYC 7/24

A historical file on books on display at the Monroe University Libraries - and the occasion for which they were displayed

Explore New York City this Summer

Books at the Dr. Donald E. Simon Memorial Library (BX)

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: New York City

With so many superb trails in the area, planning a hike can be a frustrating endeavor, but with this newly revised and updated edition of 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles finding the right trail is a snap. From secluded woods and sun-struck seashores, to lowland swamps and rock-strewn mountain tops, these hikes showcase Paleolithic rock shelters, ruins from the Revolutionary and Civil War periods, a bat cave, ghostly ruins, and much, much more. Unbounded by state lines, the trails awaiting hikers in the updated edition of 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: New York City include a meandering ascent of Jenny Jump Mountain in Hope, New Jersey, a deep exploration of Trout Brook Valley near Weston, and a scenic section of the Appalachian Trail that runs by Fitzgerald Falls in New York. Packed with valuable tips and humorous observations, the guide prepares both novices and veterans for the outdoors and includes all the information hikers need to get the most out of the trails.

Mannahatta : A natural history of New York City

On September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson first set eyes on the land that would become Manhattan. It's difficult for us to imagine what he saw, but for more than a decade, landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson has been working to do just that. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City is the astounding result of those efforts, reconstructing, in words and images, the wild island that millions of New Yorkers now call home. By geographically matching an 18th-century map of Manhattan's landscape to the modern cityscape, combing through historical and archaeological records, and applying modern principles of ecology and computer modeling, Sanderson is able to re-create the forests of Times Square, the meadows of Harlem, and the wetlands of downtown. Filled with breathtaking illustrations that show what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago, Mannahatta is a groundbreaking work that gives readers not only a window into the past, but inspiration for green cities and wild places of the future.

Radical Walking Tours of New York City

RADICAL WALKING TOURS OF NEW YORK CITY Few people know that Trotsky lived in New York just before the Russian Revolution. He lived in the Bronx and worked as a journalist in the East Village. This and many other intriguing facts are revealed in this new walking guide which eschews the usual guidebook fare and takes the reader to the battle sites of the class struggle. Illustrated with 30 b & w photographs.

Empire State Building : the making of a landmark

This is an elegant and surprising biography of a 65-year-old building that, no longer the tallest in the world, has endured as the symbol of New York City, the epitome of the sky scraper and the very icon of progress the world over. "A richly informative account of the raising of the world's most famous skyscraper".--Chicago Tribune. photos.

The Park and the People : A history of Central Park

This "exemplary social history" is the first full-scale account of Central Park ever published. The story of Central Park's people--the merchants and landowners who launched the project; the immigrant and African-American residents who were displaced by the park; the politicians, gentlemen, and artists who disputed its design and operation; the German gardeners, Irish laborers, and Yankee engineers who built it; and the generations of New Yorkers for whom Central Park was their only backyard. In tracing the park's history,

Forgotten New York : views of a lost metropolis

An urban exploration of the oddities and artifacts of New York City's past that are hidden in plain view across the boroughs--from the World's first Hall of Fame in the Bronx to the remnants of the original Penn Station in Manhattan Perfect for lifelong New Yorkers as well as first-time visitors to the city, Forgotten New York is a guide to the quirky elements that fall through the cracks of other guidebooks. Kevin Walsh has put together a stunning collection of houses dating back to the Dutch, yellow brick roads, gas-lit lampposts that time forgot, churches that look like space ships, tropical parrots in Brooklyn, and miles of grand old movie theaters that are now drug stores. An at-a-glance guide to the history and architecture of the city, it's also an urban explorer walking tour of the five boroughs, complete with comprehensive maps and extensive photos.

Guide to New York City Landmarks

Five boroughs rich with history-and one guide to it all The official and only complete guide to New York City's landmarks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg opens this treasure trove of historical discovery with an elegant Foreword. What follows are insightful descriptions of more than 1,000 individual landmarks and 84 historic districts. Everyone will feel like a native New Yorker when they quickly point out landmarks with the help of 80 easy-to-read maps. New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is the agency responsible for identifying and designating local landmarks and historic districts. Established in 1965 in response to the destruction of the original Penn Station, the agency is comprised of eleven members appointed by the mayor and a professional staff.

The Other Islands of New York City

Experience a New York City most tourists, and even most natives, never see. Within the city's boundaries are dozens of islands--some famous, like Ellis, some infamous, like Rikers, and others forgotten, like North Brother. While the spotlight often falls on the museums, trends, and restaurants of Manhattan, the city's "other" islands, each with its own personality, offer the day-tripper everything from nature trails to military garrisons to sailing excursions. This detailed guide and comprehensive history to forty islands tells their colorful, often lurid stories, and will give you a sense of how New York City's politics, population, and landscape have evolved over the last three and a half centuries. Full of offbeat stories and little-known facts and legends, this is much more than a travel guide.

The Diamond in the Bronx : Yankee Stadium

No sport has mattered more to Americans than baseball--and no team has had a greater impact on baseball than the New York Yankees. In this marvelous history of Yankee Stadium. Fans have a box-seat at the Stadium's first Opening Day: The stunning visual impact of the baseball's first true stadium, the festivities, the players (including Babe Ruth who christened the Stadium with its first home run), and the game in which the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1. The Stadium was immediately known as "The House That Ruth Built," but Sullivan takes us behind the scenes to meet the politicians, businessmen and fixers who were even more responsible for the Stadium than the Babe was: Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the beer baron and Tammany Hall insider who bought the Yankees and built the Stadium; Sullivan looks at the legendary players like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle as well as lesser lights like Jake Powell to see their impact beyond the diamond. Along the way, Sullivan uses the story of the Stadium to examine issues ranging from racial integration and urban renewal to the reasons why New York City, even during tough times, has come to adopt the Stadium as a public obligation. Neil Sullivan knows baseball and city politics and the connections between the two.

The History of Brooklyn's Three Major Performing Arts Institutions

Brooklyn's cultural life has always been deeply embedded in its educational and social life, a life that has seen many changes through the 19th and 20th centuries. This is the first book that investigates the history of Brooklyn's three best-known performing arts institutions: Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College (BCBC), and St. Ann's Center for Restoration and the Arts. Divided into three major sections, this work establishes the cultural history and social context in which these three performing arts institutions developed and thrived. Beginning first with an overview of the birth of the city itself, the book features background histories on the founding of BAM, BCBC, and St. Ann's with reference to their programming, management, architecture, design, and construction. It also expands upon the institutions' physical renovations and innovations, and the artistic visions of changing managements throughout the years.

Coney Island : The People's Playground

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Coney Island was the uncontested epicenter of America's emerging mass culture. It was the quintessential American resort: the birthplace of the amusement park, the hot dog, and the roller coaster. Its history is one of breathtaking transformation and re-invention. Celebrated for its glittering amusement parks and its enormous crowds, it was in times past a mecca of grand hotels, race tracks, beer gardens, gambling dens, concert saloons, and dance halls. A new mass culture began to take shape there. Its harshest critics decried it as Bedlam by the Sea, but others deemed it as a necessary outlet for the masses where the democratic spirit was granted free rein. Despite its precipitous decline, Coney Island remains a metaphor for the American amusement industry and the hundreds of honky-tonk resorts and amusement parks it has spawned.

Brooklyn : a state of mind

Here is Arthur Miller on Midwood, Mel Brooks on Williamsburg, Spike Lee on Fort Green. David McCullough sees Truman, F. Murray Abraham deconstructs Brooklynese, Jerry Della Famina describes those hot summer nights, and Nora Guthrie remembers living with her father Woody in Coney Island. There's the West Indian Day parade and the Neptune Parade, Ebbet's Field Sym-phony and Norman Mailer in a homeless shelter, pigeon-racing and parakeets in Green-wood Cemetery, Junior's cheesecake, the judge in the Gotti trial, the world's best handball player, and a wise guy's guide to dining. For over 250 years immigrants from all over the world have lived in the neighborhood called Brooklyn, and fanned out to the rest of the country. An 81 square mile patchwork of city, college town, quiet fishing village, industrial center, bedroom community, and seaport, Brooklyn is the Dodgers, Walt Whitman, Mrs. Stahl's knishes, the bridge-and BROOKLYN, an obsessive and definitive book that's as colorful, interesting, and quirky as the world it celebrates.

Books at the New Rochelle Campus Library

In the Country of Brooklyn

One of every seven people in the United States can trace their family back to Brooklyn, New York--all seventy-one square miles of it; home to millions of people from every corner of the globe over the last 150 years. Now Peter Golenbock, the author of the acclaimed book Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers, returns to Kings County to collect the firsthand stories of the life and times of the people of Brooklyn--and how they changed the world. The nostalgic myth that is Brooklyn is all about egg creams and stickball, and, of course, the Dodgers. 

The Flatiron : the New York landmark and the incomparable city that arose with it /

The marvelous story of the Flatiron: the instantly recognizable building that signaled the start of a new era in New York history. Critics hated it. The public feared it would topple over. Passersby were knocked down by the winds. But even before it was completed, the Flatiron Building had become an unforgettable part of New York City. With an ostentatious lifestyle that drew constant media scrutiny, It was a time when Madison Square Park shifted from a promenade for rich women to one for gay prostitutes; when photography became an art; motion pictures came into existence; the booming economy suffered increasing depressions; jazz came to the forefront of popular music--and all within steps of one of the city's best-known and best-loved buildings.

The Waldorf-Astoria : America's Gilded dream /

The Waldorf-Astoria has been home to kings, magnates, presidents and many of the greatest cultural talents of the Twentieth Century. General Douglas MacArthur chose to retire in the Waldorf Towers; Cole Porter lived in suite 33A for many years, which Frank Sinatra paid one million dollars a year to live in after Porter died. "The grand cities of the world have their grand hotels, the bed-and-breakfasts for the mighty and the moneyed. Ward Morehouse III explores one of New York City's grandest in The Waldorf-Asrtoria: America's Gilded Dream ... Morehouse writes of pleasures and scandals, of the hard facts of running a hotel and of its romance. The hotel comes off well in the hands of its appreciative Boswell and one will find "The Waldorf-Astoria" to be a pleasant buffet."

Grand Central : how a train station transformed America /

History of the iconic Grand Central Terminal, from one of New York City's favorite writers, just in time to celebrate the train station's 100th fabulous anniversary. In 1913, Grand Central Station was officially opened and immediately became one of the most beautiful and recognizable Manhattan landmarks. In this celebration of the one hundred year old terminal,  looks back at Grand Central's conception, amazing history, and the far-reaching cultural effects of the station that continues to amaze tourists and shuttle busy commuters. Along the way, Roberts will explore how the Manhattan transit hub truly foreshadowed the evolution of suburban expansion in the country, and fostered the nation's westward expansion and growth via the railroad. This book will allow readers to peek into the secret and unseen areas of Grand Central -- from the tunnels, to the command center, to the hidden passageways. With stories about everything from the famous movies that have used Grand Central as a location to the celestial ceiling in the main lobby (including its stunning mistake) to the homeless denizens who reside in the building's catacombs, this is a fascinating and, exciting look at a true American institution.

Harlem : The four hundred year history from Dutch village to Capital of Black America /

Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of Black America, Harlem's twentieth century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place. From Henry Hudson's first contact with native Harlemites, through Harlem's years as a colonial outpost on the edge of the known world, Harlem was an agricultural center under British rule and the site of a key early battle in the Revolutionary War. Later, wealthy elites including Alexander Hamilton built great estates there for entertainment and respite from the epidemics ravaging downtown. In the nineteenth century, transportation urbanized Harlem and brought waves of immigrants from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere. Harlem's mix of cultures, extraordinary wealth and extreme poverty was electrifying and explosive.

Downtown : My Manhattan /

- Introduction Part 1: Legislation and formal adjudication procedures - The Construction Act - ICE Adudication Procedure - JCT Adjudication Procedure - GC/Works Adjudication Procedure - CIC Model Adjudication Procedure - The Scheme - Draft Proposed Possible Scheme Amendments Part 2: The conduct of an adjudication - Adjudicator appointments - Jurisdiction - Procedural fairness - Conduct of the adjudication - The Decision Part 3: Supplementary matters - Miscellaneous issues - Appeals and enforcement - Insurance implications - Conclusions - Appendices - Bibliography

The Village : 400 years of beats and bohemians, radicals and rogues, a history of Greenwich Village /

The Village is the first complete history of Greenwich Village, the prodigiously influential and infamous New York City neighborhood.   From the Dutch settlers and Washington Square patricians, to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and Prohibition-era speakeasies; from Abstract Expressionism and beatniks, to Stonewall and AIDS, the connecting narratives of The Village tell the story of America itself. The Village features lively, well-researched profiles of many of the people who made Greenwich Village famous, including Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger, Eugene O'Neill, Marcel Duchamp, Upton Sinclair, Willa Cather, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, Anais Nin, Edward Albee, Charlie Parker, W. H. Auden, Woody Guthrie, James Baldwin, Maurice Sendak, E. E. Cummings, and Bob Dylan.

New York Then and Now

Pairing historical black-and-white images of notable locations with specially commissioned photographs of the same scenes as they are today, Thunder Bay Press's Then and Now series reveals the fascinating developments and cultural changes that took place. Available in standard and compact editions, this best-selling series makes an ideal souvenir or gift for travelers and locals alike.

American Passage : the History of Ellis Island /

"By bringing us the inspiring and sometimes unsettling tales of Ellis Island, Vincent Cannato's American Passage helps us understand who we are as a nation." -- Walter Isaacson "Never before has Ellis Island been written about with such scholarly care and historical wisdom. Highly recommended!" --Douglas Brinkley, bestselling author of The Wilderness Warrior The remarkable saga of America's landmark port of entry, from immigration post to deportation center to mythical icon.

New York 24/7 : Amazing photography of an extraordinary state /

Following the success of The New York Times bestseller America 24/7, DK is publishing 50 books that showcase the best photographs from each state - all to be published on the same day. Each individual book includes 95% new photography and is a unique personal expression of state pride.

Gotham Unbound : the ecological history of greater New York /

Gotham Unbound recounts the four-century history of how hundreds of square miles of open marshlands became home to six percent of the nation's population. Ted Steinberg brings a vanished New York back to vivid, rich life. You will see the metropolitan area anew, not just as a dense urban goliath but as an estuary once home to miles of oyster reefs, wolves, whales, and blueberry bogs. That world gave way to an onslaught managed by thousands, from Governor John Montgomerie, who turned water into land, and John Randel, who imposed a grid on Manhattan, to Robert Moses .Resting on a sturdy foundation of research and imagination, Steinberg's volume begins with Henry Hudson's arrival aboard the Half Moon in 1609. This book is a powerful account of the relentless development that New Yorkers wrought as they plunged headfirst into the floodplain and  With metropolitan areas across the globe on a collision course with rising seas, Gotham Unbound helps explain how one of the most important cities in the world has ended up in such a perilous situation.

               THIS RESEARCH OR "LIBGUIDE" WAS PRODUCED BY THE LIBRARIANS OF MONROE UNIVERSITY             

    EMAIL: library@monroeu.edu -- Bronx Campus (646) 393-8333 / New Rochelle Campus (914)-740-6437