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Lincoln’s Near Duel-to-the-Death with an Irish Rival
Lincoln’s Near Duel-to-the-Death with an Irish Rival

Lincoln’s Near Duel-to-the-Death with an Irish Rival

​By Niall O'Dowd

Abraham Lincoln’s long-standing and colorful history with the children of Ireland played a major role in his political rise, his presidency, and ultimately the Union victory in the Civil War. Much of that history has never been told, such as the near duel between Lincoln and rival — and future Union general — James Shields, reminiscent of Hamilton — ​Burr.

Excerpted from Lincoln and the Irish: The Untold Story of How the Irish Helped Abraham Lincoln Save the Union with author's permission. ​Copyright © 2018 Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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Antebellum & Civil War, Politics, Reviews, Race & Ethnicity, ExcerptsGuest UserComment
"People of the City": Children in the City
"People of the City": Children in the City

“People of the City”: Children in the City

By Robert A. Slayton

The Ashcan artists viewed the people of the city from a unique perspective. Unlike the elites, they did not consider these individuals their biological inferiors. Yet they also differed from the reformers, in that they rejected the notion that the people who lived in dense city neighborhoods were inherently subjects of pity. Instead, Henri, Sloan, Myers, and the others painted children and women and men, each from these individuals' own, unique perspective, rather than imposing a worldview on them. By so doing, in their paintings and drawings, they gave working-class individuals agency, showing how these people adapted to the world around them in a myriad of ways, ways that often enabled them to attain a measure of control over some parts of their lives.

Copyright © 2017 SUNY Press. Excerpted from Beauty in the City: The Ashcan School with the author's permission. All rights reserved. ​

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"Vision From An Ashcan": A Radical Exploration of New Subjects
"Vision From An Ashcan": A Radical Exploration of New Subjects

"Vision From An Ashcan": A Radical Exploration of New Subjects

By Robert A. Slayton

The Ashcan school represented a challenge to its era. In a fundamental reinterpretation of art’s appropriate subject matter, it threw down a gauntlet, of canvas and paint, to the art world both of the right and of the left. It did not see the city through the narrow peephole of the elites, instead introducing new landscapes, new characters. But these perspectives were also different from what the reformers saw. This new approach painted the rest of the city, with beauty, endowing urban and working-class individuals of all ages and genders with agency and will. In so doing, the Ashcan artists created one of the great American art forms.

Copyright © 2017 SUNY Press. Excerpted from Beauty in the City: The Ashcan School with the author's permission. All rights reserved. ​

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Basketball and Black Pride: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Resident Organizing in New York City Public Housing
Basketball and Black Pride: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Resident Organizing in New York City Public Housing

Basketball and Black Pride: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Resident Organizing in New York City Public Housing

By Nick Juravich

In the summer of 1968, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — known at the time as Lew Alcindor, and just barely twenty-one years old — ​was already a basketball legend. Impossibly tall and incredibly talented, he had led New York City’s Power Academy to 71 straight wins before joining John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins. After a year on the “freshman team,” he had led the varsity to back-to-back NCAA titles, winning tournament MVP both times (he would add another title and MVP in 1969). And that summer, if you were a kid growing up in one of the New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) developments, you could meet the legend in person.

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Arts & Culture, Postwar New York, Race & EthnicityGuest User Comment
Sneaky Pete: A Bowery Story
Sneaky Pete: A Bowery Story

Sneaky Pete: A Bowery Story

By Stephen Paul DeVillo

The Bowery emerged from the Depression greatly the worse for wear. But the old days remained the same at McSorley’s, despite some changes of ownership. When the childless Bill McSorley felt the heavy hand of age settling on him, he sold the place in March 1936 to a retired policeman named Daniel O’Connell. Bill McSorley died on September 21, 1938, and Dan O’Connell followed him in December 1939. Dan willed the saloon to his daughter Dorothy O’Connell Kirwan, who found herself inheriting a saloon that, as a woman, she had never been allowed to enter. After some reflection on the matter, Dorothy decided to continue John McSorley’s venerable no-women tradition. She allowed herself no excep­tion to this rule, setting foot in the place only when it was closed on Sun­day mornings to tally up the week’s receipts.

This post excerpted with permission from The Bowery: The Strange History of New York’s Oldest Street by Stephen Paul DeVillo. Copyright © 2017 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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Excerpts, Manhattan, Great Depression & New DealGuest UserComment
"The Dutch": Bouweries and Early Settlement in New Amsterdam
"The Dutch": Bouweries and Early Settlement in New Amsterdam

"The Dutch": Bouweries and Early Settlement in New Amsterdam

By Alice Sparberg Alexiou

The settlement was to be called New Amsterdam, and it would serve as headquarters of New Netherland, which stretched from New England to Virginia. The Dutch had claimed the vast territory — a claim the English refused to recognize — after Henry Hudson in 1609 sailed the Half Moon up the river that would bear his name.

From Devil's Mile: The Rich, Gritty History of The Bowery by Alice Sparberg Alexiou, copyright 2018 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Press.

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Excerpts, Manhattan, New AmsterdamGuest UserComment
The Case of Mrs. Brinsmade and Civil War New York

The Case of Mrs. Brinsmade and Civil War New York

By Wyatt Evans

In October 1862, the New York City Metropolitan Police held Mrs. Isabella Brinsmade for over a month without charge in the precinct house on West 47th Street. The twenty-year old Louisiana native had arrived in New York that August, sent by her merchant father who thought she would be safer there than in Union-occupied New Orleans. Her husband was away fighting in the Confederate Army, and she does not appear to have maintained any special affection for him. By all accounts Mrs. Brinsmade was intelligent, high-spirited, very attractive, and... liked to talk.

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Antebellum & Civil War, Gender & Sexuality, PoliticsGuest UserComment
Women after Suffrage: An Interview with Elisabeth Israels Perry
Women after Suffrage: An Interview with Elisabeth Israels Perry

Women after Suffrage: An Interview with Elisabeth Israels Perry

Today on the blog, editor Katie Uva sits down with Elisabeth Israels Perry to talk about her research process and her insights as she prepares her new book, After the Vote: Feminist Politics ​​in La Guardia's New York (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2019).

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Gender & Sexuality, Interviews, Politics, Progressive Era, Great Depression & New DealGuest UserComment