An Anthology celebrating the literary legacy of the Big Apple, illustrated with photography and edited by award winning alternate history and Hollywood mystery writer Elizabeth Crowens with an introduction by New York Times bestselling writer Reed Farrel Coleman. NY Times bestselling mystery writer of over thirty-one novels, Reed Farrell Coleman. Reed is a four time Edgar Award nominee in three different categories: Best Novel, Best Paperback Original, and Best Short Story. He is a four-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of the Year. He has also won the Audie, Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards. Other contributors include: Charles Salzberg (The Henry Swann Book series), Tom Straw (screenwriter from Night Court, Nurse Jackie, author of the Richard Castle mysteries), R.J. Koreto (mysteries set during the Gilded Age of New York), Steven Van Patten (writes horror featuring African Americans in New York), Randee Dawn (entertainment journalist for Today.com, wrote The Unofficial Companion Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), Barbara Krasnoff (staff writer for The Verge, nominated for multiple awards in speculative fiction including The History of Soul 2065), Marco Conelli (retired NYPD detective, author of the Matthew Livingston Young Adult Mystery series, among others), Triss Stein (mysteries set in Brooklyn), and Richie Narvaez (Hipster Death Rattle, Noiryorican, and Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco.) This project was grant-funded through the City Artist Corps Grants program, presented by The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), with support from the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) as well as Queens Theatre.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

A Dominican-born academic tells the story of how the Great Books transformed his life—and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities. Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college. Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education—and why it can still remake lives.