From the author of House of Outrageous Fortune For seventy-five years, it’s been Manhattan’s richest apartment building, and one of the most lusted-after addresses in the world. One apartment had 37 rooms, 14 bathrooms, 43 closets, 11 working fireplaces, a private elevator, and his-and-hers saunas; another at one time had a live-in service staff of 16. To this day, it is steeped in the purest luxury, the kind most of us could only imagine, until now. The last great building to go up along New York’s Gold Coast, construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Since then, 740 has been home to an ever-evolving cadre of our wealthiest and most powerful families, some of America’s (and the world’s) oldest money—the kind attached to names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Bouvier, Chrysler, Niarchos, Houghton, and Harkness—and some whose names evoke the excesses of today’s monied elite: Kravis, Koch, Bronfman, Perelman, Steinberg, and Schwarzman. All along, the building has housed titans of industry, political power brokers, international royalty, fabulous scam-artists, and even the lowest scoundrels. The book begins with the tumultuous story of the building’s construction. Conceived in the bubbling financial, artistic, and social cauldron of 1920’s Manhattan, 740 Park rose to its dizzying heights as the stock market plunged in 1929—the building was in dire financial straits before the first apartments were sold. The builders include the architectural genius Rosario Candela, the scheming businessman James T. Lee (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s grandfather), and a raft of financiers, many of whom were little more than white-collar crooks and grand-scale hustlers. Once finished, 740 became a magnet for the richest, oldest families in the country: the Brewsters, descendents of the leader of the Plymouth Colony; the socially-registered Bordens, Hoppins, Scovilles, Thornes, and Schermerhorns; and top executives of the Chase Bank, American Express, and U.S. Rubber. Outside the walls of 740 Park, these were the people shaping America culturally and economically. Within those walls, they were indulging in all of the Seven Deadly Sins. As the social climate evolved throughout the last century, so did 740 Park: after World War II, the building’s rulers eased their more restrictive policies and began allowing Jews (though not to this day African Americans) to reside within their hallowed walls. Nowadays, it is full to bursting with new money, people whose fortunes, though freshly-made, are large enough to buy their way in. At its core this book is a social history of the American rich, and how the locus of power and influence has shifted haltingly from old bloodlines to new money. But it’s also much more than that: filled with meaty, startling, often tragic stories of the people who lived behind 740’s walls, the book gives us an unprecedented access to worlds of wealth, privilege, and extraordinary folly that are usually hidden behind a scrim of money and influence. This is, truly, how the other half—or at least the other one hundredth of one percent—lives.

The Library owns the volumes of the American Jewish Yearbook from 1899 - current.

New York in The 70s is a remarkable body of work produced by photographer Allan Tannenbaum while he was photo editor of the SoHo Weekly News in Manhattan. Based mainly on news and feature stories assigned by the paper, the photographs encompass many aspects of New York life while capturing the heady exuberance of the 1970s and early 1980s. SoHo and the art world were his primary subjects, yet the images also provide a broad chronicle of the city's politics and society. Entertainment - especially the music scene - and night life became a large part of the editorial mix. The collision of continuing 1960s counterculture with the remnants of Nixon, Watergate, and Vietnam, coupled with a stagnant economy, was a catalytic force that resulted in an explosion of creativity. By photographing everything from street gangs to disco divas, from homeless to Hollywood stars, Tannenbaum had assembled a personal diary of his journey as a photojournalist and raconteur through a strange era in New York. His studio portraits, night-time flashes, and street photography paint an unique and often unseen picture of the 1970s.

"Through Feminist Eyes gathers in one volume the most incisive and insightful essays written to date by the distinguished Canadian historian Joan Sangster. To the original essays, Sangster has added reflective introductory discussions that situate her earlier work in the context of developing theory and debate. Sangster has also supplied an introduction to the collection in which she reflects on the themes and theoretical orientations that have shaped the writing of women's history over the past thirty years. Approaching her subject matter from an array of interpretive frameworks that engage questions of gender, class, colonialism, politics, and labour, Sangster explores the lived experience of women in a variety of specific historical settings. In so doing, she sheds new light on issues that have sparked much debate among feminist historians and offers a thoughtful overview of the evolution of women's history in Canada."--Pub. desc.

Generations of Basques in New York have vibrantly exercised their culture, language, values, and traditions, transmitting to their children a robust sense of ethnic identity. In today's world of globalization it is often assumed that particular communities are disappearing as a consequence of the factors of homogenization. However, the Basques have proved this false. Depicting Basque mutual aid societies, language courses, musical and dance troupes, cuisine classes, community activities, sport, political involvement, and ties to homeland institutions are just a few of the ingredients which mix to compose the chapters of this work. Readers will learn about the history and reasons why Basques left the Pyrenees of northern Spain and southern France from the personal experiences of political and economic exiles' oral histories. Original archival research allows us to discover the features of the early 1900s Centro Vasco-Americano, the Basque Government-in-exile Delegation in New York, and the development of Basque organizations. "Basqueness" is being redefined in this transnational cosmopolitan community, and with the pioneer spirit of their ancestors, latter generation Basques are nurturing and promoting Basque culture and identity to the world.

The Jewish intellectual tradition has a long and complex history that has resulted in significant and influential works of scholarship. In this book, the authors suggest that there is a series of common principles that can be extracted from the Jewish intellectual tradition that have broad, even life-changing, implications for individual and societal achievement. These principles include respect for tradition while encouraging independent, often disruptive thinking; a precise system of logical reasoning in pursuit of the truth; universal education continuing through adulthood; and living a purposeful life. The main objective of this book is to understand the historical development of these principles and to demonstrate how applying them judiciously can lead to greater intellectual productivity, a more fulfilling existence, and a more advanced society.