Carnegie Hall in New York City from its beginning in 1891, a decade-by-decade picture of the concert stage that has produced some of the finest virtuoso performances in musical history and lectures.

Carnegie Hall is recognized worldwide, associated with the heights of artistic achievement and a multitude of famous performers. Yet its beginnings are not so well known. In 1887, a chance encounter on a steamship bound for Europe brought young conductor Walter Damrosch together with millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and his new wife, Louise. Their subsequent friendship led to the building of this groundbreaking concert space. This book provides the first comprehensive account of the conception and building of Carnegie Hall, which culminated in a five-day opening festival in May 1891, featuring spectacular music, a host of performers and Tchaikovsky as a special guest conductor.

Covering an exhaustive range of information about the five boroughs, the first edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City was a success by every measure, earning worldwide acclaim and several awards for reference excellence, and selling out its first printing before it was officially published. But much has changed since the volume first appeared in 1995: the World Trade Center no longer dominates the skyline, a billionaire businessman has become an unlikely three-term mayor, and urban regeneration—Chelsea Piers, the High Line, DUMBO, Williamsburg, the South Bronx, the Lower East Side—has become commonplace. To reflect such innovation and change, this definitive, one-volume resource on the city has been completely revised and expanded. The revised edition includes 800 new entries that help complete the story of New York: from Air Train to E-ZPass, from September 11 to public order. The new material includes broader coverage of subject areas previously underserved as well as new maps and illustrations. Virtually all existing entries—spanning architecture, politics, business, sports, the arts, and more—have been updated to reflect the impact of the past two decades. The more than 5,000 alphabetical entries and 700 illustrations of the second edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City convey the richness and diversity of its subject in great breadth and detail, and will continue to serve as an indispensable tool for everyone who has even a passing interest in the American metropolis.

Christopher Redmond's fascinating account of Doyle's first trip to America has been reconstructed from newspaper accounts describing the places Doyle visited, from the Adirondacks to New York, Chicago, and Toronto. Despite the gruelling tour schedule, Doyle met dozens of the most important literary and social lights of America. Everywhere he went he was mobbed by public hungry for news of the man he had "killed off" a year earlier â?? Sherlock Holmes, who was front page news. In Redmond's lively narrative, which is based on letters, newspaper reports, and other newly unearthed sources, you will discover, as Doyle himself put it, "the romance of America."

Through extensive, exclusive interviews with Eastwood (and the friends and colleagues of a lifetime), Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel has penetrated a complex character who has always been understood too quickly, too superficially. Schickel pierces Eastwood's monumental reserve to reveal the anger and the shyness, the shrewdness and frankness, the humor and powerful will that have helped make him what he is today. of photos.

Profiles nearly 900 prominent Poles in all walks of life, beginning with Mieszko I, who in 963 united six tribes to form the nation of Poland, and continuing up to the country's present. Ten saints and 11 Nobel Prize winners are among the subjects, as are the inventor of the automobile windshield wi