Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Boomtown Chicago, 1920s—a world of gangsters, musicians, and clubs. Young Benny Lehrman, born into a Jewish hat-making family, is expected to take over his father’s business, but his true passion is piano—especially jazz. After dark, he sneaks down to the South Side to hear the bands play. One night he is asked to sit in with a group. His playing is first-rate. The trumpeter, a black man named Napoleon, becomes Benny’s friend and musical collaborator. They are asked to play at a saloon Napoleon has christened The Jazz Palace. But Napoleon’s main gig is at a mob establishment, which doesn’t take kindly to their musicians freelancing . As Benny and Napoleon navigate the highs and the lows of the Jazz Age, a bond is forged between them that is as memorable as it is lasting. Morris brilliantly captures the dynamic atmosphere and dazzling music of an exceptional era.

In 1492, two history-altering events occurred: the Jews and Muslims of Spain were expelled, and Columbus set sail for the New World. Many Spanish Jews chose not to flee and instead became Christian in name only, maintaining their religious traditions in secret. Among them was Luis de Torres, who accompanied Columbus as an interpreter. Over the centuries, de Torres’ descendants traveled across North America, finally settling in the hills of New Mexico. Now, some five hundred years later, it is in these same hills that Miguel Torres, a young amateur astronomer, finds himself trying to understand the mystery that surrounds him and the town he grew up in: Entrada de la Luna, or Gateway to the Moon. Poor health and poverty are the norm in Entrada, and luck is rare. So when Miguel sees an ad for a babysitting job in Santa Fe, he jumps at the opportunity. The family for whom he works, the Rothsteins, are Jewish, and Miguel is surprised to find many of their customs similar to those his own family kept but never understood. Braided throughout the present-day narrative are the powerful stories of the ancestors of Entrada’s residents, portraying both the horrors of the Inquisition and the resilience of families. Moving and unforgettable, Gateway to the Moon beautifully weaves the journeys of the converso Jews into the larger American story.

Set in Chicago during the late 1970s, Record Palace is an eccentric debut novel about jazz, art, race, and identity.

The Breakers, the Waldorf, the Biltmore, the Sherry, the Pierrethese landmark hotels are synonymous with grand luxury and style. When they were built, in the 1920s, their refined elegance and grandeur set the bar for hotels and resorts the world over. Responsible for creating these and countless other hotels throughout the United States, were the partners of a single architectural firm: Schultze & Weaver. Together, this duoan architect and an engineervirtually invented the glamorous lifestyle made famous in films like Grand Hotel. Catering to the social elite of which they were themselves a part, Schultze & Weaver synthesized the Old World style of Renaissance Italy, Moorish Spain, and Georgian England with all of the modern amenities that made hotel living luxurious. This book presents portfolios of fifteen of the firms most spectacular hotels, culminating in the Art Moderne masterpiece of the Waldorf-Astoria. Over two hundred period photographs and hand-colored architectural renderings chart the ascent of the American hotel in all its glory and glamour, before the Great Depression forever changed the lifestyles of America's rich and famous. Essays address the cultural and technological developments that underpin the creation of resort and residential hotels, including the elemental role played by Schultze & Weaver. This book is published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami, held in celebration of their tenth anniversary.

The inspiration for the Netflix series premiering March 3rd "Hugely enjoyable, magnificently researched, and deeply absorbing." —Jason Goodwin, New York Times Book Review At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul—an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city—people were looking toward an uncertain future. Never purely Turkish, Istanbul was home to generations of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as Muslims. It welcomed White Russian nobles ousted by the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik assassins on the trail of the exiled Leon Trotsky, German professors, British diplomats, and American entrepreneurs—a multicultural panoply of performers and poets, do-gooders and ne’er-do-wells. During the Second World War, thousands of Jews fleeing occupied Europe found passage through Istanbul, some with the help of the future Pope John XXIII. At the Pera Palace, Istanbul's most luxurious hotel, so many spies mingled in the lobby that the manager posted a sign asking them to relinquish their seats to paying guests. In beguiling prose and rich character portraits, Charles King brings to life a remarkable era when a storied city stumbled into the modern world and reshaped the meaning of cosmopolitanism.

In this culinary memoir, readers get a personal tour of the storied New Orleans restaurant with the woman who put it—and Creole cuisine—on the map. Meet Ella Brennan: mother, mentor, blunt-talking fireball, and matriarch of a New Orleans restaurant empire. Ella is famous for bringing national attention to Creole cuisine, and her unique vision is best summed up in her own words: "I don’t want a restaurant where a jazz band can’t come marching through." In this candid autobiography, Ella shares her life story from childhood in the Great Depression to opening acclaimed eateries. When the Brennans launched Commander’s Palace, it became the city’s most popular restaurant. Many of the city’s most famous chefs such as Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse, Troy McPhail, and many others, got their start there. Miss Ella of Commander’s Palace describes the drama, the disasters, and the abundance of love, sweat, and grit it takes to become the matriarch of New Orleans’ finest restaurant empire.

Traveling from the highland desert of northern Mexico to the steaming jungles of Honduras to the seashore of the Caribbean, Mary Morris confronts the realities of place, of poverty, of machismo, and of self. "One gutsy woman and one fantastic writer".--"Cosmopolitan".