"Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine's Mount Katahdin....

"The Plaza is the account of one vaunted New York City address that has become synonymous with wealth and scandal, opportunity and tragedy. With glamour on the surface and strife behind the scenes, it is the story of how one hotel became a mirror reflecting New York's place at the center of the country's cultural narrative for over a century."-- Dust jacket flap.

Presents a portrait of Chesapeake Bay's two-hundred-year-old Tangier Island crabbing community, describing their isolated and vanishing way of life while explaining how rising sea levels will render the island uninhabitable within twenty years.

His book is a romance, a story of first love between Americans and a thing they call "wilderness." For it was in the Adirondacks that masses of non-Native Americans first learned to cherish the wilderness as a place of recreation and solace. In this lyrical narrative history, the author reveals that the affair between Americans and the Adirondacks was by no means one of love at first sight. And, even now, Schneider shows that Americans' relationship...

This classic account of slum conditions in New York City was first published in 1890. Annotation. Famous journalistic record, exposing poverty & degradation of New York slums around 1900, by major social reformer. Famous journalistic record, exposing poverty and degradation of New York slums around 1900, by major social reformer. 100 striking and influential photographs. In How The Other Half Lives New Yorkers read with horror that three-quarters...

"Joseph Ferdinand Gould - better known as Joe Gould - was a member of one of the oldest families in Massachusetts and a graduate of Harvard, and his parents took it for granted that he would go on to medical school and become a surgeon and a distinguished civic leader, as many of his ancestors, including his father and grandfather, had been. Instead, in 1916, in his middle twenties, he abruptly broke with his background and came to New York City and...

"The Amish, one of America's most intriguing peoples, have survived for 300 years! While much has been written on the Amish, little has appeared about their history. This newly revised and updated book brings together in one volume a thorough history of the Amish people. From their beginnings in Europe through their settlement in North America, the Amish have struggled to maintain their beliefs and traditions in often hostile settings. Atlantic crossings,...

New York is the greatest restaurant city the world has ever seen. In Appetite City, the former New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes leads us on a grand historical tour of New York's dining culture. Beginning with the era when simple chophouses and oyster bars dominated the culinary scene, he charts the city's transformation into the world restaurant capital it is today. Appetite City takes us on a unique and delectable journey, from the...

"A narrative history about Anthony Comstock, US Postal Inspector and vice hunter, and the remarkable women who opposed him"--

"Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John's College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial-school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840 and 1850s and the most famous Roman Catholic in America, Hughes defended Catholic institutions...