Autobiography & Biography
Bad Faith
Andrew Feffer
Bad Faith recounts the history of the Rapp-Coudert investigation into communist subversion in the public schools and municipal colleges of New York City, lasting from 1940 to 1942. This study explores how prominent depression-era liberals, as they joined in accusing Communists of “bad faith” and branded them enemies of American democracy, anticipated and made McCarthyism possible.
ISBN: 9780823281152
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Sacred Shelter
Edited by Susan Greenfield
Thirteen formerly homeless New Yorkers tell their life stories, describing their joys as well as torments, their broken-heartedness and faith. At a time when national homelessness is on the rise, and when the discriminatory and punitive social conditions that create it are getting worse, Sacred Shelter celebrates the personal dignity of each and every individual and insists on our communal need to listen to each other.
ISBN: 9780823281190
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Maurice Blanchot
Christophe Bident
Translated by John McKeane
Maurice Blanchot: a Critical Biography attempts a critical and theoretical biography by drawing on unpublished documents and interviews with those close to the writer. It tracks the life and work of one of the most important novelists and critics of the twentieth century, who influenced many writers, artists, and philosophers, not least those of French theory.
ISBN: 9780823281756
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Boss of Black Brooklyn
Ron Howell
Boss of Black Brooklyn presents a riveting and untold story about the struggles and achievements of the first black person to hold public office in Brooklyn. Bertram L. Baker immigrated to...
ISBN: 9780823280995
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In the Shadow of Genius
Named a Gift Book for the Discerning New Yorker by The New York TimesIn the Shadow of Genius is the newest book by photographer and author Barbara Mensch....
ISBN: 9780823280452
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Oh Capitano!
Rudolph J. Vecoli and Francesco Durante
Edited by Donna R. Gabaccia
Translated by Elizabeth O. Venditto
The story of Celso Cesare Moreno who traveled the world lying, scheming, and building an extensive patron/client network to expand western trade and imperialism in Asia, traffick migrant workers and children in the Atlantic, influence the fate of Hawaii, and meddle in international affairs during a critical era of imperial expansion.
ISBN: 9780823279876
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Boss of Black Brooklyn: The Life and Times of Bertram L. Baker
Ron Howell
Boss of Black Brooklyn presents a riveting and untold story about the struggles and achievements of the first black person to hold public office in Brooklyn. Bertram L. Baker immigrated to...
ISBN: 9780823281008
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Counter Institution
Nandini Bagchee
Counter Institution is a history of three re-purposed buildings in the Lower East Side--Peace Pentagon, ABC No Rio, and El Bohio--that have been used by activists as their headquarters to launch various actions over the past forty years.
ISBN: 9780823279265
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Out of the Ordinary
Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka
Edited by Jacob Lau and Cameron Partridge
Out of the Ordinary is the memoir of Dr. Michael Dillon / Lobzang Jivaka (1915-1962) who transitioned from female to male between 1939 and 1949, became a ship’s surgeon in the (British) Merchant Navy, and was a monastic novice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition when he died unexpectedly in 1962.
ISBN: 9780823280391
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Neighborhood Success Stories
Carol Lamberg
This book illustrates examples of successful community development on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and in the Bronx, using seven different methods of finance, only one of which is still available today. The buildings were developed between 1975 and 1997.
ISBN: 9780823279203
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The House of Early Sorrows
Louise DeSalvo
A stunning collection of one writer’s beginnings. DeSalvo reframes and revises memoiristic essays that were the seeds of longer collections, to reveal her true power as a memoirist: the ability to dig ever deeper for personal and political truths that illuminate what it means to be a woman, a child of Italian immigrants, a writer, and a scholar.
ISBN: 9780823279302
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Pure Act
Michael N. McGregor
A biography of experimental poet and spiritual seeker Robert Lax, who inspired Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac and many others. Using information and stories drawn from journal entries, letters, interviews and the author’s personal recollections, the book chronicles the development of Lax’s distinctive poetic style and a spontaneous, spiritual approach to life he called pure act.
ISBN: 9780823276820
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A Shot Story
David Borkowski
David Borkowski was nearly shot to death during a botched robbery when he was 15. Soon before turning 40, he obtained a Ph.D. in Literature and Rhetoric from the CUNY Graduate School. He is now a Professor of English. A Shot Story describes that journey.
ISBN: 9780823278749
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Paul Hanly Furfey
Nicholas K. Rademacher
Recounts and analyzes Paul Hanly Furfey’s contribution to Catholic social thought and practice in the fields of sociology, social work, and higher education across the twentieth-century in his roles as priest, scholar, educator, and social reformer.
ISBN: 9780823276776
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Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free
Alexander Jefferson
With Lewis H. Carlson
Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is a rare gift detailing the experience of Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, who was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending...
ISBN: 9780823274383
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Mario Cuomo
William O'Shaughnessy
Governor Mario Cuomo’s life and accomplishments are part of the public record, but in Mario Cuomo: Remembrances of a Remarkable Man, William O’Shaughnessy gives readers an exclusive and a deeply...
ISBN: 9780823274260
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Red Apple
Phillip Deery
Through five case histories, the book provides a snapshot of political persecution in mid-twentieth century America.
ISBN: 9780823271795
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Before the Fires
Mark D. Naison and Bob Gumbs
People associate the South Bronx with gangs, violence, drugs, crime, burned-out buildings, and poverty. This is the message that has been driven into their heads over the years by the media. As Howard...
ISBN: 9780823273539
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The Amazing Adventures of Bob Brown
Craig Saper
Biography of Robert Carlton “Bob” Brown, avant-garde publisher, poet and reading machine inventor, bestselling pulp fiction and Hollywood movie treatment writer, cookbook author with Cora and Rose Brown, advertiser copyrighter, editorial board member of the Masses, curator of A Museum of Social Change, and much more.
ISBN: 9780823271467
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Teaching While Black
Pamela Lewis
Chronicles the experiences of a black female teaching in public schools in the South Bronx in the era of No Child Left Behind and the Common Core. Addressing “high stakes” that go beyond tests, Teaching While Black examines how and what one must teach poor students of color.
ISBN: 9780823271412
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Cytomegalovirus
Hervé Guibert
Translated by Clara Orban
Afterword by Todd Meyers
Cytomegalovirus is a lucid and spare autobiographical narrative by Hervé Guibert (1955-1991) of the everyday moments of his hospitalization due to complications of AIDS. In one of his last works, the acclaimed writer presents his struggle with the disease in terms that are unsentimental and deeply human.
ISBN: 9780823268573
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Chasing Ghosts
Louise DeSalvo
“Chasing Ghosts” describes how the daughter of a World War II veteran comes to understand her emotionally wounded father through his stories about his childhood, naval service in the late 1930s, and wartime experiences, and through the research she undertakes to understand her father’s life in the context of history.
ISBN: 9780823268849
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From Slave Ship to Harvard
James H. Johnston
A true story of six generations of an African American family in Maryland. Based on paintings, photographs, books, diaries, court records, legal documents, and oral histories, the book traces Yarrow Mamout and his in-laws, the Turners, from the colonial period through the Civil War to Harvard and finally the present day.
ISBN: 9780823239511
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The Lincoln Assassination
Craig L. Symonds and Frank J. Williams
Edited by Harold Holzer
The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most prominent events in U.S. history. It continues to attract enormous and intense interest from scholars, writers, and armchair...
ISBN: 9780823263981
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Home, Uprooted
Devika Chawla
Home—how we experience it and what that says about the “selves” we come to occupy—is a crucial question of our contemporary moment. Home, Uprooted delivers one perspective on this question via cross-generational oral histories of Indian Partition refugees. Stories in this book are one iteration of how diasporic migrations might be enacted and what home—in its sense, absence, presence—might mean to displaced populations.
ISBN: 9780823256440
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