A 2017 James Beard Award Nominee: From the breweries of New Amsterdam to Brooklyn’s Sweet’n Low, a vibrant account of four centuries of food production in New York City. New York is hailed as one of the world’s “food capitals,” but the history of food-making in the city has been mostly lost. Since the establishment of the first Dutch brewery, the commerce and culture of food enriched New York and promoted its influence on America and the world by driving innovations in machinery and transportation, shaping international trade, and feeding sailors and soldiers at war. Immigrant ingenuity re-created Old World flavors and spawned such familiar brands as Thomas’ English Muffins, Hebrew National, Twizzlers, and Ronzoni macaroni. Food historian Joy Santlofer re-creates the texture of everyday life in a growing metropolis—the sound of stampeding cattle, the smell of burning bone for char, and the taste of novelties such as chocolate-covered matzoh and Chiclets. With an eye-opening focus on bread, sugar, drink, and meat, Food City recovers the fruitful tradition behind today’s local brewers and confectioners, recounting how food shaped a city and a nation.

Winner - 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds—and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

An illustrated journey through the lore and little-known history behind ambrosia, Ipswich clams, Buffalo hot wings, and more. This captivating and surprising tour of America’s culinary canon celebrates the variety, charm, and occasionally dubious lore of the foods we love to eat, as well as the under-sung heroes who made them. Every chapter, organized from A to Z, delves into the history of a classic dish or ingredient, most so common—like ketchup—that we take them for granted. These distinctly American foods, from Blueberries and Fortune Cookies to Pepperoni, Hot Wings, Shrimp and Grits, Queso, and yes, even Xanthan Gum, have rich and complex back stories that are often hidden in plain sight, lost to urban myth and misinformation. American Food: A Not-So-Serious History digs deep to tell the compelling tales of some of our most ordinary foods and what they say about who we are—and who, perhaps, we are becoming.

Bringing fresh perspectives to the team that has brought joy, triumph and even a miracle to New York City, this collection of new essays examines portrayals of the Mets in film, television, advertising and other media. Contributors cover little-known aspects of Mets history that even die-hard fans may not know. Topics include the popularity of Rheingold's advertising in the 1950s and 1960s, Bob Murphy's broadcasting career before joining the Mets' announcing team in 1962, Mr. Met's rivalry with the Phillie Phanatic, Dave Kingman's icon status, the pitching staff's unsung performance after the 1969 World Series victory, and Joan Payson's world-renowned art collection and philanthropy.

Benjamin R. Cohen uses the pure food crusades at the turn of the twentieth century to provide a captivating window onto the origins of manufactured foods in the United States. In the latter nineteenth century, extraordinary changes in food and agriculture gave rise to new tensions in the ways people understood, obtained, trusted, and ate their food. This was the Era of Adulteration, and its concerns have carried forward to today: How could you tell the food you bought was the food you thought you bought? Could something manufactured still be pure? Is it okay to manipulate nature far enough to produce new foods but not so far that you question its safety and health? How do you know where the line is? And who decides? In Pure Adulteration, Benjamin R. Cohen uses the pure food crusades to provide a captivating window onto the origins of manufactured foods and the perceived problems they wrought. Cohen follows farmers, manufacturers, grocers, hucksters, housewives, politicians, and scientific analysts as they struggled to demarcate and patrol the ever-contingent, always contested border between purity and adulteration, and as, at the end of the nineteenth century, the very notion of a pure food changed. In the end, there is (and was) no natural, prehuman distinction between pure and adulterated to uncover and enforce; we have to decide. Today’s world is different from that of our nineteenth-century forebears in many ways, but the challenge of policing the difference between acceptable and unacceptable practices remains central to daily decisions about the foods we eat, how we produce them, and what choices we make when buying them.

In this utterly immersive volume, Mike Wallace captures the swings of prosperity and downturn, from the 1898 skyscraper-driven boom to the Bankers' Panic of 1907, the labor upheaval, and violent repression during and after the First World War. Here is New York on a whole new scale, moving from national to global prominence -- an urban dynamo driven by restless ambition, boundless energy, immigrant dreams, and Wall Street greed. Within the first two decades of the twentieth century, a newly consolidated New York grew exponentially. The city exploded into the air, with skyscrapers jostling for prominence, and dove deep into the bedrock where massive underground networks of subways, water pipes, and electrical conduits sprawled beneath the city to serve a surging population of New Yorkers from all walks of life. New York was transformed in these two decades as the world's second-largest city and now its financial capital, thriving and sustained by the city's seemingly unlimited potential. Wallace's new book matches its predecessor in pure page-turning appeal and takes America's greatest city to new heights.

If you're religious about your coffee, you're in holy company. If you like your coffee with a bit of inspiration, a hint of humor, and a dose of insight, you'll enjoy pouring a mug full of java and curling up with Holy Grounds. Popular author and avid coffee drinker Tim Schenck brews just the right blend of the personal and historical as he explores the sometimes amusing and often profound intersection between faith and coffee. From the coffee bean's discovery by ninth-century Ethiopian Muslims to being condemned as "Satan's drink" by medieval Christians, to becoming an integral part of Passover in America, coffee has fueled prayer and shaped religious culture for generations. In Holy Grounds, Schenck explores the relationship between coffee and religion, moving from faith-based legends that have become entwined with the history of coffee to personal narrative. He takes readers on a journey through coffee farms in Central America, a pilgrimage to Seattle, coffeehouses in Rome, and a monastic community in Pennsylvania. Along the way, he examines the power of ritual, mocks bad church coffee, introduces readers to the patron saint of coffee, wonders about ethical considerations for today's faith-based coffee lovers, and explores lessons people of faith should learn from coffeehouse culture about building healthy, authentic community.