Books

The Hulett Hotel Fire on Lake George

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The rise of local and specialist history publishers such as Arcadia and History Press has been a boon to local history and an opportunity part-time writers and historians to have their work published outside the vanity press. One of those part-timers is George Kapusinski, long time denizen of Huletts Landing on Lake George and publisher of The Huletts Current blog. His second effort for History Press (his previous work Huletts Landing on Lake George was published by Arcadia) has just been published, and it’s a fascinating and well-written account of the devastating fire at the Hulett Hotel 1915. Even more revealing is the well-researched tale of the trial held in the aftermath of the fire.

Broken into 12 chapters, which include short, readable and informative sub-chapters, The Hulett Hotel Fire on Lake George (History Press, 2012) features a set of unique photos of the events surrounding the fire and the fire’s aftermath, only recently discovered taped to the back of an Abe Lincoln lithograph. But this is more than the tale of the fire and the rebuilt hotel’s preeminence among early 20th century Lake George resorts. After the hotel was rebuilt, a mysterious figure claimed that the hotel’s owner, William H. Wyatt, had paid him to start the fire. Kapusinski investigates the resultant arson trial in detail, including the burning of Wyatt’s former Glenwood Hotel just three years earlier at Lake Bomoseen.

In a wide ranging narrative, Kapusinski takes us into the time period, explores the places (including Wyatt’s Trojan Hotel in Troy where he was arrested), and explores the motives and character of the those involved. A great read.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Americas Invasion of Canada: The War of 1812

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Although it has taken a backseat to the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War and has been largely forgotten outside the areas it was fought, this year marks the Bicentennial of the War of 1812. In the reissued The American Invasion of Canada: The War of 1812’s First Year (Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), Pierre Berton transforms history into an engrossing narrative that reads like a fast-paced novel.

To America’s leaders in 1812, an invasion of Canada seemed to be “a mere matter of marching,” as Thomas Jefferson confidently predicted. How could a nation of eight million Americans fail to subdue a struggling British colony of 300,000 already enmeshed in a life and death struggle with the armies (and navies) of Napoleon? Read more →

New Netherland: Hendricks Award Submissions

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The Annual Hendricks Award is given to the best book or book-length manuscript relating to any aspect of the Dutch colonial experience in North America until the American Revolution. The Award carries a prize of $5,000 as well as a framed print of a painting by Len Tantillo entitled Fort Orange and the Patroon’s House. The prize-winner, chosen by a five-member panel of scholars, is selected in May or June. The Award is given at a ceremony in conjunction with the annual New Netherland Seminar, held in September. Reasonable travel expenses will be reimbursed.

Two categories of submissions will be considered in alternate years:

(1) recently completed dissertations and unpublished book-length manuscripts (2012), and (2) recently published books (2013). If there is no suitable winner in the designated category in any particular year, submissions from the alternate category will be considered. In addition, submissions from the previous year will be reconsidered for the Award.

Criteria: Entries must be based on research completed or published within two years prior to submission. Manuscripts may deal with any aspect of the Dutch colonial experience as defined above. Biographies of individuals whose careers illuminate aspects of the history of New Netherland and its aftermath are eligible, as are manuscripts dealing with literature and the arts, provided that the methodology is historical. Co-authored books are eligible, but edited collections of articles are not, nor are works of fiction or works of article length. An entry may be a self-nomination, an outside nomination, or in response to invitations to submit from Hendricks Award readers.

Submissions will be judged on their contribution to the scholarly understanding of the Dutch colonial experience in North America and the quality of their research and writing.

Three copies of a published book or three clear, readable photocopies of the manuscript must be submitted on or before March 15, with a letter of intent to enter the contest. Copies cannot be returned. Alternatively, submissions may be in pdf format.

Address entries to:

The Annual Hendricks Award Committee
New Netherland Institute
Cultural Education Center, Room 10D45
Albany, NY 12230

Send PDF submissions to [email protected] use &#8216-Hendricks award’ in the subject line.

Lincoln Author Harold Holzer Event to Focus on NYS

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Abraham Lincoln Scholar Harold Holzer will be visiting the Albany Institute of History & Art to present the lecture “Lincoln and New York” on Sunday, February 26 at 2 PM. Following the lecture, listeners will have a pre-publication date opportunity to purchase and receive a signed copy of Holzer’s newest book, Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory.

As visitor, President-elect, and later as President and iconic martyr, Abraham Lincoln had an unusual and ongoing relationship with New York State. In turn, the Empire State forged a unique and important relationship with its wartime leader. Holzer examines the 16th President’s dealings with the nation’s most populous and important state, and the role New York played in the social, military, economic and technological upheavals of the Civil War.

Holzer will be available after the lecture to sign copies of his newest book, Emancipating Lincoln, which will be available for early sale prior to its publication on February 27. The book focuses on Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and how its meaning has changed over time. It has received early acclaim from critics, being deemed “highly recommended for anyone wanting to learn about how freedom came to be” by the Library Journal.

Admission to this event is $10.00 per person. Seating is limited, so please purchase tickets ahead of time at albanyinstitute.org or in person at the museum Front Desk.

Books: America in the Forties

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In America in the Forties, Ronald Allen Goldberg is professor of history and chair of the History Department at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Virginia, energetically argues that the decade of the 1940s was one of the most influential in American history, a period marked by war, sacrifice, and profound social changes.

With great detail, Goldberg traces the entire decade from the first stirrings of war in a nation consumed by the Great Depression through the conflicts with Europe and Japan, to the start of the Cold War and the dawn of the atomic age.

Richly drawn portraits of the period’s charismatic and often controversial leaders — Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry Truman — demonstrate their immense importance in shaping the era, and in turn, the course of American government, politics, and society.

Goldberg chronicles the US role during World War II and the early Cold War, showing how these military and diplomatic developments helped lay the foundation for the country’s current role in economic and military affairs worldwide.

Combining a readable narrative with analysis, America in the Forties is useful introduction to understanding a pivotal era.

Goldberg is also the author of America in the Twenties.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan

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Columbia University Press has announced the publication of The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011, edited by Hilary Ballon, which includes more than 150 illustrations and a gatefold of the original plan. The book accompanies the exhibit of the same name which just opened at the Museum of the City of New York.

Laying out Manhattan’s street grid and providing a rationale for the growth of New York was the city’s first great civic enterprise, not to mention a brazenly ambitious project and major milestone in the history of city planning. The grid created the physical conditions for business and society to flourish and embodied the drive and discipline for which the city would come to be known. The Greatest Grid does more than memorialize such a visionary effort, it also serves as reference full of rare images and information.

The Greatest Grid shares the history of the Commissioners’ plan, incorporating archival photos and illustrations, primary documents and testimony, and magnificent maps with essential analysis. The text, written by leading historians of New York City, follows the grid’s initial design, implementation, and evolution, and then speaks to its enduring influence. A foldout map, accompanied by explanatory notes, reproduces the Commissioners’ original plan, and additional maps and prints chart the city’s pre-1811 irregular growth patterns and local precedent for the grid’s design.

This text describes the social, political, and intellectual figures who were instrumental in remaking early New York, not in the image of old Europe but as a reflection of other American cities and a distinct New World sensibility. The grid reaffirmed old hierarchies while creating new opportunities for power and advancement, giving rise to the multicultural, highly networked landscape New Yorkers are familiar with today.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

A New Titanic Book for Young Readers

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In her new book for young adults, Titanic: Voices from the Disaster (Scholastic Press, 2012), Deborah Hopkinson, noted author of historical fiction and nonfiction for young readers, resurfaces a hundred-year-old tragedy through the stories and voices of those who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912.

Voices from the Disaster includes letters and narrative accounts from Titanic’s passengers to prompt readers to think of those whose journey ended along with what Hopkinson calls &#8220a masterpiece of human engineering:&#8221

. In a letter to their parents, Harvey, Lot, and Madge wrote, &#8220Well dears so far we are having a delightful trip the weather is beautiful and the ship magnificent. Lots of love and don’t worry about us. Ever your loving children.&#8221

. &#8220You have to try to imagine it &#8211 the last moment I saw my dear sister stand there with little Thelma tightly in her arms.&#8221 Ernst Persson, third class passenger.

. &#8220I almost thought, as I saw her sink beneath the water, that I could see Jacques, standing where I had left him and waving at me.&#8221 May Futrelle, first class passenger remembering her husband

&#8220This book is an introduction to the disaster and to just a few of the people who survived,&#8221 says Hopkinson, &#8220I hope their stories and voices remind you, as they do me, that our lives are fragile and precious. And I hope they make you wonder, as I do, what it would have been like to be on the Titanic that night so long ago.&#8221

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Americas First African American Woman Judge

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A long overdue biography of the nation’s first African American woman judge elevates Jane Matilda Bolin to her rightful place in American history as an activist, integrationist, jurist, and outspoken public figure in the political and professional milieu of New York City before the onset of the modern Civil Rights movement. Jacqueline A. McLeod’s, Daughter of the Empire State: The Life of Judge Jane Bolin is published by the University of Illinois Press (2011).

Bolin was appointed to New York City’s domestic relations court in 1939 for the first of four ten-year terms. When she retired in 1978, her career had extended well beyond the courtroom. Drawing on archival materials as well as a meeting with Bolin in 2002, historian Jacqueline A. McLeod reveals how Bolin parlayed her judicial position to impact significant reforms of the legal and social service system in New York.

Beginning with Bolin’s childhood and educational experiences at Wellesley and Yale, Daughter of the Empire State chronicles Bolin’s relatively quick rise through the ranks of a profession that routinely excluded both women and African Americans. Deftly situating Bolin’s experiences within the history of black women lawyers and the historical context of high-achieving black New Englanders, McLeod offers a multi-layered analysis of black women’s professionalization in a segregated America.

Linking Bolin’s activist leanings and integrationist zeal to her involvement in the NAACP, McLeod analyzes Bolin’s involvement at the local level as well as her tenure on the organization’s national board of directors. An outspoken critic of the discriminatory practices of New York City’s probation department and juvenile placement facilities, Bolin also co-founded, with Eleanor Roosevelt, the Wiltwyck School for boys in upstate New York and campaigned to transform the Domestic Relations Court with her judicial colleagues. McLeod’s careful and highly readable account of these accomplishments inscribes Bolin onto the roster of important social reformers and early civil rights trailblazers.

Author Jacqueline A. McLeod is an associate professor of history and African & African American studies at Metropolitan State College of Denver and co-editor of Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Blacks in Diaspora.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

The Grinnell at 100: Celebrating Community, History

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In 2010 and 2011, residents of the Grinnell, a land-marked cooperative apartment house at 800 Riverside Drive in Manhattan’s Audubon Park Historic District, celebrated their building’s centennial with a year of activities including the launch of a centennial website, logo and photography competitions, and a birthday celebration for the neighborhood. Grinnell residents have now produced a book commemorating that centennial year, The Grinnell at 100: Celebrating Community, History.

Through a historical essay, numerous personal histories, biographical sketches, and 150 photographs and illustrations, the 94-page, full-color book traces a half-acre triangular block in northern New York City from primordial forest to a 21st-century co-operative apartment house.

Constructed between June 10, 1910 and July 29, 1911, the Grinnell sits on a triangular plot of land in Washington Heights where the family of George Blake Grinnell once pastured a few cows when the surrounding area was known as Audubon Park. “The Park,” a bucolic suburb that grew out of John James Audubon’s farm Minnie’s Land, remained suburban into the 20th Century, but became prime property for real estate development when the subway opened at 157th Street in November 1904. Six years later, when the extended Riverside Drive opened, its path crossing Audubon Park, the Grinnell heirs, led by eldest son George Bird Grinnell, sold their property. Developers quickly snapped it up and between 1909 and 1911 erected a group of Beaux Arts apartment houses. Noting the effects of rapid transit, newspaper commentators dubbed the two-year period Audubon Park’s “rapid transformation.”

Edited by Matthew Spady and designed by Jacqueline Thaw, featuring photographs by Charles Baum and Mo Strom, and contributions from more than 30 Grinnell residents, The Grinnell at 100 is a must-have edition for anyone with an interest in the history of New York City, Washington Heights, or the Audubon Park Historic District – and of course the book will interest Grinnell residents, friends, and admirers, past and present.

The Grinnell at 100: Celebrating Community, History, and an Architectural Gem, available at Lulu.com. For information about discounts on purchases of multiple copies, contact [email protected].

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers.

Peter Feinman: Academics and Popular History

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Previous posts here have addressed issues raised at the annual conference of the American Historical Association (AHA) on of the lack of history jobs and the lack of history interest by the press. Related to that, a discussion on a history list last summer focused on the disconnect between the world of academic historians and the general public under the heading of &#8220Scholarly versus Popular History.&#8221 The following submission by Lance R. Blyth, University of New Mexico (7/19/11) deserves attention: Read more →