Written by Alissa Torres and drawn by Sungyoon Choi, American Widow is the heart-rending true story about Torres’s experience as a widow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Beautifully and thoughtfully illustrated, the graphic novel memoir recounts Torres’s tempestuous journey through shock, pain, confusion, birth, and rebirth in the wake of the death of her husband …
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America has never known a royal family, but the Vanderbilts came closer to it than any family ever has.  Told by CNN news anchor and journalist Anderson Cooper, and novelist Katherine Howe, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty is the tale of the frittering away of the greatest American fortune.  Cooper and Howe share the …
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In Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age, Betsy Prioleau opens up the life of media giant and Woodlawn resident Miriam Leslie.  Well-written and researched, Diamonds and Deadlines pores over the legacy of the Gilded Age author, publisher, and suffragette, much of which remains unknown.  The head of a …
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In his Grinnell: America’s Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West, John Taliaferro tells the story of one of America’s first conservationists George Bird Grinnell.  The son of a New York merchant, Grinell saw a new vision for a nation in the tumult of the Industrial Age.  This biography details Grinell’s prolific life …
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In his Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century, writer and historian Mike Dash brings to life the personalities of one of the city’s most debauched, vice-ridden areas during the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Extremely well-researched, Satan’s Circus gives the wide-angle lens of a square mile of Manhattan between 24th & 40th Streets, …
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Author and historian Hampton Sides’ In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette is a harrowing tale of polar exploration in the Gilded Age.  Reading like an epic adventure story, In the Kingdom of Ice is a fantastic book about the hurried American attempt to sail to the North Pole via the Bering …
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While we take it for granted, the electric light bulb has been called the most important invention since man-made fire.  Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Light is historical fiction about the fight to spread electricity.  This brilliant journey into the past reignites the feud between prolific inventors and fathers of the electrical industry Thomas Edison and …
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In his Rogues’ Gallery: The Birth of Modern Policing and Organized Crime in Gilded Age New York, biographer, historian, and former Wall Street attorney John Oller writes of the New York Police Department from its earliest days to the second decade of the 20th century.  Well-executed and researched, Rogues’ Gallery tells the story of crime and …
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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Deborah Blum takes us through the development of forensic science in New York in her The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.  Drawing from highly original research, Blum brings us back to the dawn of real-life crime scene investigation.  The Poisoner’s Handbook is a blazing …
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Law and finance go hand-in-hand. Former Wall Street lawyer John Oller tells the story of a new type of “white shoe” lawyer in White Shoe: How a New Breed of Wall Street Lawyers Changed Big Business and the American Century.  The term “white shoe” derives from the white buck oxford, a men’s shoe popular among upper-class …
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