New York City's West Village has long been a haven for intellectuals, writers, artists, and activists who found freedom there. Ninety interviews paint a lively portrait of this Oz-like neighborhood.

Known as "Little Bohemia" since 1916, New York City's West Village has long been a haven for intellectuals, writers, artists, and activists. Here the 19th-century homes lining the narrow cobblestone streets were broken up into apartments to house the newcomers. Gathering places like jazz clubs, piano bars, coffee shops, and bookstores hummed with a sense of freedom from a more rigid society outside the neighborhood's borders. This would be the home of the groundbreaking Westbeth Artists Housing and of the Stonewall riots that gave birth to the gay rights movement. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, the area began to witness vast changes. Desirable brownstones were transformed back into single family homes and streets once filled with antique stores and curiosity shops were becoming emblazoned with the names of top fashion designers. Michael D. Minichiello's tantalizing book captures this profound shift through ninety interviews with community activists, business owners, journalists, writers, and artists of all media. As they share their stories, we get a glimpse of both the reality and the myths that made this counterculture neighborhood the setting for both film (My Sister Eileen, Next Stop Greenwich Village) and television (Sex and the City, Friends). Through the words of those who know it best-including Calvin Trillin, Susan Brownmiller, Charles Busch, David Del Tredici and Frederic Block-West Village Originals paints an enlivening portrait of this Oz-like neighborhood where the prevailing sentiment of its denizens is that there is no place like the West Village.

A literary and pictorial stroll through the charming and history-filled streets of New York's West Village reveals the history and little known tales of this fascinating and picturesque neighborhood. Greenwich Village is a tourist's dream and a favorite weekend destination for New Yorkers. A part of Manhattan Island that holds its own amid the noise and confusion of the twenty-first century, it still retains much of the character of the old farming community that was part of the original settlement of Manhattan. The West Village, the northwest section of the neighborhood, is bounded by the Hudson River on the west and Greenwich Avenue on the east and is where it all began. Famous people such as Sinclair Lewis, Fiorello LaGuardia, William Bill the Butcher Poole, Frank Serpico, James Baldwin and Jackson Pollock, among dozens of others, called this neighborhood home. Stroll down the back streets and along the waterfront and peer behind the facades of these historic structures to discover its fascinating history, hidden secrets and little-known tales.

This “sweet tale” of a Vermont family’s annual trek to New York City to sell trees is “a cross between It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol” (USA Today). Every holiday season for nearly twenty years, Billy Romp, his wife, and their three children have spent nearly a month living in a tiny camper and selling Christmas trees on Jane Street in New York City. They arrive from Vermont the day after Thanksgiving and leave just in time to make it home for Christmas morning—and for a few weeks they transform a corner of the Big Apple into a Frank Capra-esque small town alive with heartwarming holiday spirit. A lovely, lovingly illustrated little gem of a book, this delightful tenth anniversary edition of a beloved Christmas classic tells the poignant, inspiring story of an unforgettable family that brings the Christmas spirit to life on a street corner in Manhattan and the warm, wide circle of friends who have welcomed them to the neighborhood. Christmas on Jane Street is about the transformative power of love—love of parent and child, of merchant and customer, of stranger and neighbor. The ideal Christmas story, it is about the lasting and profound difference that one person can make to a family and one family can make to a community. “A heartwarming story”—Newsday “A touching tale fragrant with the season . . . a special treat for those who love Christmas trees.” —Tampa Tribune

Highlights the state's rich cultural and natural landscapes and attractions with fifty-seven photographs in a week-at-a-glance format.

The true story of seventeen months in the life of a Vietnamese village where a handful of American Marines and Vietnamese militia lived and died together attempting to defend it. In Black Hawk Down, the fight went on for a day. In We Were Soldiers Once & Young, the fighting lasted three days. In The Village, one Marine squad fought for 495 days—half of them died. Few American battles have been so extended, savage and personal. A handful of Americans volunteered to live among six thousand Vietnamese, training farmers to defend their village. Such “Combined Action Platoons” (CAPs) are now a lost footnote about how the war could have been fought; only the villagers remain to bear witness. This is the story of fifteen resolute young Americans matched against two hundred Viet Cong; how a CAP lived, fought and died. And why the villagers remember them to this day.

In February of 1973, Nancy Weber put an ad in the Village Voice offering to trade places with another woman, a stranger, for a month. In hopes of better understanding what was fixed and final in each person—and what was invented, and therefore might be reinvented—they would use each other’s names, live in each other’s homes, love each other’s loves, and do each other’s work. After interviewing many of the fascinating women who answered the ad, Weber—single (with a longtime lover) and straight—chose a polyamorous, bisexual, married psychologist and academic, the pseudonymous Micki Wrangler. They spent five months getting ready for their adventure—cajoling their nearest and dearest into participating, exchanging thousands of details, and swapping deep secrets. But, instead of a month, their wild ride lasted only a week. Wrangler was having a rough time (and Weber too good a time, maybe) so they decided to call things off. Wanting The Life Swap to convey more than her own experience, Weber invited Wrangler and ten others to enrich the book with their uncensored reports. Publicity for the book included stints on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and To Tell the Truth. The book achieved a kind of cult status, in part because it’s a relic of 1970s sexual openness (cruelly destroyed by HIV/AIDS) and belief in the right of self-invention. Recent critics have credited the book with inspiring life swap reality TV shows and several popular novels and films.