Strange and Obscure Stories of New York City
Little-Known Tales About Gotham's People and Places
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The 1948 crime film The Naked City (later a television show) ended with this iconic line “There are eight million stories in the naked city.” Things have not changed either before or since: every era and neighborhood is full of true tales and legends about which even residents are likely to be unaware. Strange And Obscure Stories Of New York City takes the reader on a breathtaking tour of the five boroughs in search of these accounts. Some are eerily fascinating in their own right while others explain how the city became the great metropolis that it is.
Before the World Trade Center 9/11 tragedy, the aftermath of a fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum in the East River was the city’s greatest disaster. The 1904 event occurred during an outing for a church group. The loss of life—1,021 out of the 1,358 passengers—devastated the German-America community that inhabited Manhattan’s East Village. To escape bad memories, they relocated to the Upper East Side’s Yorkville, the reason why that neighborhood became celebrated for its German restaurants, stores, and breweries.
On July 23, 1886, not long after the Brooklyn Bridge opened, a 23-year-old named Steve Brodie announced that he survived a 150-foot drop from that span into the East River. (A liquor dealer offered to back a saloon that Brodie wanted to open but only if he took the risk). Although there were no witnesses, news of the alleged jump made headlines, with The New York Times supporting Brodie’s claim, and the phrase “pull a Brodie,” meaning to try a dangerous stunt, entering popular parlance.
Then too are the unsolved murders, ghost stories, urban legends (are there indeed alligators living in the sewers?), and hidden histories that are all part of this lively and captivating chronicle of the world’s greatest city.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest collection of historical essays, Rowland (Strange and Obscure Stories of the Civil War) aims to highlight an unfamiliar side of New York City, but he isn't quite up to the task. As he acknowledges in his preface, these 15 entries are more strange than obscure. Many of the chapters cover familiar ground John Peter Zenger's fight against censorship, the city's pneumatic subway, Nelly Bly's undercover work to expose the horrific conditions at the city's asylums, and the tragic explosion of the steamship General Slocum and don't add anything new. The book does include sections chronicling lesser-known events, such as the opening essay about daredevils who jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge shortly after its opening in 1883. The amusing food fight that broke out in 1903, on the last day the New York Stock Exchange and Produce Exchange shared space, enables Rowland to display a sense of humor, and he is also adept at summarizing much more serious events, such as the New York State Revolt of 1741. Overall, the book serves primarily as a teaser that will lead readers to seek out more thorough accounts, and its lack of novelty is not enhanced by lackluster prose.
