Home to more than 2.3 million people who speak at least 150 different languages, Queens is heralded as the most multicultural place on Earth. People go there to watch Major League Baseball or the U.S. Open. Perhaps they venture just across the river, to check out a trendy new restaurant, bar, or performance space in Long Island City or Astoria, or ride the train all the way out to the beach on a summer's day. Now, with Walking Queens by local author Adrienne Onofri, readers get to know the whole borough. Each walk tells the story of a neighborhood: how it developed originally and how it's transformed over the years. Readers are pointed to distinctive architecture, landmark buildings, popular eateries, ethnic enclaves, celebrity residences, art and performance spaces, and natural scenery. There are tours that reveal forgotten moments in Queens history, or position you for a stunning view, or immerse you in all the sights, scents, and sounds of a melting pot. Maps and transportation directions make it easy to find your way. Whether you're looking for an afternoon stroll or a daylong outing, grab this book and start walking Queens!

Home to more than 2.3 million people who speak at least 150 different languages, Queens is heralded as the most multicultural place on Earth. People go there to watch Major League Baseball or the U.S. Open. Perhaps they venture just across the river, to check out a trendy new restaurant, bar, or performance space in Long Island City or Astoria, or ride the train all the way out to the beach on a summer's day. Now, with Walking Queens by local author Adrienne Onofri, readers get to know the whole borough. Each walk tells the story of a neighborhood: how it developed originally and how it's transformed over the years. Readers are pointed to distinctive architecture, landmark buildings, popular eateries, ethnic enclaves, celebrity residences, art and performance spaces, and natural scenery. There are tours that reveal forgotten moments in Queens history, or position you for a stunning view, or immerse you in all the sights, scents, and sounds of a melting pot. Maps and transportation directions make it easy to find your way. Whether you're looking for an afternoon stroll or a daylong outing, grab this book and start walking Queens!

The only neighborhood-by-neighborhood guide to New York City's largest borough, from the award-winning author of The New York Nobody Knows Bill Helmreich walked every block of New York City—some six-thousand miles—to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows. Later, he re-walked most of Queens—1,012 miles in all—to create this one-of-a-kind walking guide to the city's largest borough, from hauntingly beautiful parks to hidden parts of Flushing's Chinese community. Drawing on hundreds of conversations he had with residents during his block-by-block journey through this fascinating, diverse, and underexplored borough, Helmreich highlights hundreds of facts and points of interest that you won't find in any other guide. In Bellerose, you'll explore a museum filled with soul-searing artwork created by people with mental illness. In Douglaston, you'll gaze up in awe at the city's tallest tree. In Corona, you'll discover the former synagogue where Madonna lived when she first came to New York. In St. Albans, you'll see the former homes of jazz greats, including Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. In Woodhaven, you'll walk a block where recent immigrants from Mexico, Guyana, and China all proudly fly the American flag. And much, much more. An unforgettably vivid chronicle of today's Queens, the book can be enjoyed without ever leaving home—but it's almost guaranteed to inspire you to get out and explore this captivating borough. Covers every one of Queens's neighborhoods, providing a colorful portrait of their most interesting, unusual, and unfamiliar people, places, and things Each neighborhood section features a brief overview and history; a detailed, user-friendly map keyed to the text; photographs; and a lively guided walking tour Draws on the author's 1,012-mile walk through every Queens neighborhood Includes insights from conversations with hundreds of residents

"As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever. Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs--an astonishing 6,000 miles. His epic journey lasted four years and took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and from every walk of life, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayors Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Edward Koch. Their stories and his are the subject of this captivating and highly original book. We meet the Guyanese immigrant who grows beautiful flowers outside his modest Queens residence in order to always remember the homeland he left behind, the Brooklyn-raised grandchild of Italian immigrants who illuminates a window of his brownstone with the family's old neon grocery-store sign, and many, many others. Helmreich draws on firsthand insights to examine essential aspects of urban social life such as ethnicity, gentrification, and the use of space. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan."--Publisher's description.

Presents twenty-one walking tours of New York City, including more than one hundred sites of literary significance and featuring more than two hundred books about New York written for young readers.

Accompanied by John Holyfield's gorgeous illustrations, debut author Nina Nolan's narrative wonderfully captures the amazing story of how Mahalia Jackson became the Queen of Gospel in this fascinating picture book biography. Even as a young girl, Mahalia Jackson loved gospel music. Life was difficult for Mahalia growing up, but singing gospel always lifted her spirits and made her feel special. She soon realized that her powerful voice stirred everyone around her, and she wanted to share that with the world. Although she was met with hardships along the way, Mahalia never gave up on her dreams. Mahalia's extraordinary journey eventually took her to the historic March on Washington, where she sang to thousands and inspired them to find their own voices. With a timeline and further reading section, this book is perfect for Common Core.

Traditional walking tours of New York enshrine the wealthy and the war heroes. Rarely seen are those buried in their wake - those who fought the power, pushing for a better world. In this exciting new guide, Bruce Kayton leads us to differnt kinds of monuments, offering readers a history of class struggles, labour movements and civil rights battles, with such sites as Emma Goldman's home in the East Village, Langston Hughes's house in Harlem and the site of Margaret Sanger's first birth control clinic. A new perspective on the history of New York and American radicalism.