Includes an overview of New York City for 1894 as well as information about New York City businesses.

Hell’s Kitchen is among Manhattan’s most storied and studied neighborhoods. A working-class district situated next to the West Side’s middle- and upper-class residential districts, it has long attracted the focus of artists and urban planners, writers and reformers. Now, Joseph Varga takes us on a tour of Hell’s Kitchen with an eye toward what we usually take for granted: space, and, particularly, how urban spaces are produced, controlled, and contested by different class and political forces. Varga examines events and locations in a crucial period in the formation of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, the Progressive Era, and describes how reformers sought to shape the behavior and experiences of its inhabitants by manipulating the built environment. But those inhabitants had plans of their own, and thus ensued a struggle over the very spaces—public and private, commercial and personal—in which they lived. Varga insightfully considers the interactions between human actors, the built environment, and the natural landscape, and suggests how the production of and struggle over space influence what we think and how we live. In the process, he raises incisive questions about the meaning of community, citizenship, and democracy itself.

The Palgrave Environmental Reader explores America's evolving fascination with nature and environmental concerns. From the New England Transcendentalists to the UN convention on climate change, this book includes works by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Roosevelt, Rachel Carson, E.O. Wilson, and others. Consisting of thirty-five important pieces covering a variety of issues, this reader distinguishes itself from other writing on the subject by presenting more extensive excerpts and by emphasizing themes such as environmental activism, racism, and law.