Books

The Epidemic: Power, Privilege, and Public Health

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The Epidemic: A Collision of Power, Privilege, and Public Health by David DeKok tells the story of how a vain and reckless businessman became responsible for a typhoid epidemic in 1903 that devastated Cornell University and the surrounding town of Ithaca. Eighty-two people died, including twenty-nine Cornell students.

Protected by influential friends, William T. Morris faced no retribution for this outrage. His legacy was a corporation—first known as Associated Gas & Electric Co. and later as General Public Utilities Corp.—that bedeviled America for a century. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 was its most notorious historical event, but hardly its only offense against the public interest.

The Ithaca epidemic came at a time when engineers knew how to prevent typhoid outbreaks but physicians could not yet cure the disease. Both professions were helpless when it came to stopping a corporate executive who placed profit over the public health. Government was a concerned but helpless bystander.

For modern-day readers acutely aware of the risk of a devastating global pandemic and of the dangers of unrestrained corporate power, The Epidemic provides a riveting look back at a heretofore little-known, frightening episode in America’s past that seems all too familiar. Written in the tradition of The Devil in the White City, it is an utterly compelling, thoroughly researched work of narrative history with an edge.

David DeKok is the author of Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire (Globe Pequot Press), which previously appeared as Unseen Danger. A former award-winning investigative reporter for the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he has been a guest on Fresh Air and The Diane Rehm Show.

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

Irish History: Eamon De Valera in America

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A new book by Irish journalist and commentator Dave Hannigan, De Valera in America: The Rebel President and the Making of Irish Independence, illuminates an interesting period in New York Irish history when de Valera, born in New York City in 1882, made an important return trip to convince Americans to recognize the newly proclaimed Irish Republic.

Eamon de Valera is one of the most famous characters in Irish history. He commanded troops during the 1916 Easter Rising, co-authored the Irish constitution, and in 1926 founded Fianna Fail, which continues to be the largest political party in Ireland today. De Valera was head of the Irish government from 1932–48, 1951–54 and 1957–59 and President of Ireland from 1959–73.

In June 1919, he arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel pronouncing himself the &#8220President of Ireland.&#8221 He was on a mission to convince the United States to recognize Ireland as an independent nation, and also to fund the independence movement, which would be a clear affront to Britain. De Valera went on to give speeches in some of America’s largest venues, including Madison Square Garden and Fenway Park, where he drew crowds of 60,000 people. Over the course of that year, he accumulated fame and scandal, but more importantly, he gained essential financial support for the fledgling Irish Republic.

For the first time, a book follows de Valera on his controversial trip across America, exploring his personal and political relationships, and the costs and benefits of his perilous crusade. From newspaper headlines to cloak and dagger antics, Hannigan delivers a truly unique slice of Irish Americana, bringing to life this pivotal moment in history.

Dave Hannigan is a columnist at The Sunday Tribune in Dublin, the Evening Echo (Cork) and The Irish Echo. A former Irish young journalist of the year, he is also an adjunct professor of history at Suffolk County Community College on Long Island. He lives in Rocky Point, New York.

Young Al Capone: Scarface in New York

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Many people are familiar with the story of Al Capone, the &#8220untouchable&#8221 Chicago gangster best known for orchestrating the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. But few are aware that Capone’s remarkable story began in the Navy Yard section of Brooklyn. Tutored by the likes of infamous mobsters Johnny Torrio and Frankie Yale, young Capone’s disquieting demeanor, combined with the &#8220technical advice&#8221 he learned from these insidious pedagogues, contributed to the molding of a brutal criminal whose pseudonym, &#8220Scarface,&#8221 evoked fascination throughout the world.

Despite the best efforts of previous biographers lacking true insider access, details about Capone’s early years have generally remained shrouded in mystery. Now through family connections the authors of Young Al Capone: The Untold Story of Scarface in New York, 1899-1925, William and John Balsamo, were able to access Capone’s known living associates. Collecting information through these interviews and rare documents, the life of young Al Capone in New York comes into greater focus.

Among the revelations in Young Al Capone are new details about the brutal Halloween Night murder of rival gangster &#8220Wild Bill&#8221 Lovett, grisly details on how Capone and his Black Hand crew cleverly planned the shootout and barbaric hatchet slaying of White Hand boss, Richard &#8220Peg Leg&#8221 Lonergan, insight into the dramatic incident that forced Capone to leave New York, and more.

Bill Balsamo, considered by some to be one of the premier Capone historians, has invested more than twenty-five years in researching and writing this book. He is the author of Crime, Inc. (now in its fifth printing). John Balsamo worked on the Brooklyn waterfront for more than thirty years while compiling extensive material regarding the life of young Capone.

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

New Academic Book Takes on Mad Men

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Since it premiered in July 2007, the AMC cable network’s &#8220Mad Men&#8221 series has won many awards and been syndicated across the globe. Its imprint is evident throughout contemporary culture—from TV advertisements and magazine covers to designer fashions and online debate. Its creator, Matthew Weiner, a former executive producer on &#8220The Sopranos,&#8221 has again created compelling, complex characters, this time in the sophisticated, go-go world of Madison Avenue of the 1960s, with smoking, drinking, and the playing out of prejudices and anxieties of an era long neglected in popular culture. As editor Gary R. Edgerton and a host of other well-known contributors demonstrate in this new title, Mad Men: Dream Come True TV, Mad Men is a zeitgeist show of the early twenty-first century.

Edgerton, who is Chair of the Communications and Theater Arts Department at Old Dominion University in Virginia, has edited this book to provide an academic yet still engaging read that sheds light on the appeal and attraction of the television series, as well as it’s cultural import.

Mad Men: Dream Come True TV features essays that analyze and celebrate the cutting edge TV series. It also includes an interview with the show’s Executive Producer Brett Hornbacher and an episode guide. The book presents essays under five parts: Industry and Authorship, Visual and Aural Stylistics and Influences, Narrative Dynamics and Genealogy, Sexual Politics and Gender Roles, Cultural Memory and the American Dream.

The book is part of the Reading Contemporary Television Series which offers a variety of intellectually challenging responses to what is happening in television today. Other books in the series have tackled CSI, Deadwood, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Sex and the City, The L Word, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Doctor Who, 24 and more.

Gary R. Edgerton’s previous books have included The Essential HBO Reader (with Jeffrey P. Jones) and The Columbia History of American Television. He is co-editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television.

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

Civilian Conservation Corps Reunions Planned

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On August 15, 2011, the Franklin County Historical & Museum Society will host the first of several reunions of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) alumni, family, & friends at 6:30pm at the Schryer Center for Historical & Genealogical Research (the former carriage house) at the House of History, 51 Milwaukee Street, Malone. They will celebrate the 78th anniversary of the founding of the CCC by sharing their stories and pictures of the CCC camps. There will also be a book signing of Marty Podskoch’s new book on the CCC camps in the Adirondacks. The general public is invited to learn and hear stories of the CCC. There is no charge to attend.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began on March 31, 1933 under President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to relieve the poverty and unemployment of the Depression. Camps were set up in many New York towns, state parks, & forests. Workers built trails, roads, campsites & dams, stocked fish, built & maintained fire tower observer’s cabins & telephone lines, fought fires, and planted millions of trees. The CCC disbanded in 1942 due to the need for men in WW II.

At each upcoming event, author and historian Marty Podskoch will give a short Power Point presentation on the history, memories & legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps camps in New York. CCC alumni will share stories of their days in CCC camps both in New York and other states.

Marty Podskoch will also have his new book: Adirondack Civilian Conservation Corps Camps: Its History, Memories and Legacy of the CCC available for purchase and signing. The 352-page book contains 185 interviews, over 50 charts & maps, and over 500 pictures & illustrations.

Podskoch is also the author of five other books: Fire Towers of the Catskills: Their History and Lore, two Adirondack fire tower books: Adirondack Fire Towers: Their History and Lore, the Southern Districts, and Northern Districts and two other books, Adirondack Stories: Historical Sketches and Adirondack Stories II: 101 More Historical Sketches from his weekly illustrated newspaper column.

For those unable to attend this first reunion in Malone, there are four other reunions planned:

– August 15, 2011 at 10:00 am Schenectady County Historical Society, 32 Washington Ave., Schenectady, NY (518) 374-0263

– August 26, 2011 at 10 am Crandall Library, 251 Glen Street, Glens Falls, NY (518) 792-6508

– August 26, 2011 at 6 pm Hamilton County Historical Society, at the former Speculator CCC camp and 4-H Camp, Lake Pleasant, NY- 7 pm the group will go to the Lake Pleasant School. 518) 648-5377

– September 23, 2011 at 1 pm Oneida Historical Society, 1608 Genesee St., Utica, NY (315) 735-3642

For more information on the reunion, contact Anne Werley Smallman, Director of the Franklin County Historical & Museum Society at: (518)483-2750 or [email protected].

If any one has information or pictures of relatives or friends who worked at one of the CCC camps, please contact Marty Podskoch at: 36 Waterhole Rd., Colchester, CT 06415 or 860-267-2442, or [email protected]

Museum Gets Auto Racing Trove For Library

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When racing historian and memorabilia collector Ed Biittig Sr. of Sloansville recently decided it was time to pare down his book collection to make more room for other collectibles, the library of the Saratoga Automobile Museum was the beneficiary.

Ed and wife Betty soon had cartons filled with some 350 books ready for delivery to the auto museum, where they are currently being sorted and catalogued by volunteers headed by the library coordinator, longtime museum volunteer Jerry Hart.

&#8220If we find we have duplicates, some of the books will eventually be offered for sale,&#8221 said Hart. &#8220But the majority will be cataloged and added to our already extensive collection that will be made available for use by the public every Wednesday beginning in August. Our library is divided into sections on such specific topics as Buick, Ferrari or Chrysler and broader topics such as auto racing. Enthusiasts are always welcome to use the volumes for research or just for enjoyment.&#8221

&#8220This is the fifth major donation we’ve had,&#8221 added museum trustee Ron Hedger, who coordinates the museum’s &#8220Racing in New York&#8221 gallery. &#8220Along with small donations from countless supporters of the museum, Ed’s books will join major donations from the late volunteer Ed Marks, Bud Lyons, Michigan automotive engineer Don Everett and racing personality John Fitch. I’m sure followers of auto racing will love Ed’s contribution&#8221

The Saratoga Automobile Museum is located on the grounds of Saratoga Spa State Park at 110 Avenue of the Pines. For more information, guests can visit the Museum’s website at www.saratogaautomuseum.org or call (518) 587-1935.

New Environmental History: The Nature of New York

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David Stradling, Professor and Graduate Studies Director at the University of Cincinnati, is author of The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State. This recent (Fall 2010) survey of over four hundred years of New York’s environmental history has received praise from historians and environmental policy experts.

From the arrival of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon in the estuarial waters of what would come to be called New York Harbor to the 2006 agreement that laid out plans for General Electric to clean up the PCBs it pumped into the river named after Hudson, this work offers a sweeping environmental history of New York State. David Stradling shows how New York’s varied landscape and abundant natural resources have played a fundamental role in shaping the state’s culture and economy. Simultaneously, he underscores the extent to which New Yorkers have, through such projects as the excavation of the Erie Canal and the construction of highways and reservoir systems, changed the landscape of their state.

Surveying all of New York State since first contact between Europeans and the region’s indigenous inhabitants, Stradling finds within its borders an amazing array of environmental features, such as Niagara Falls- human intervention through agriculture, urbanization, and industrialization- and symbols, such as Storm King Mountain, that effectively define the New York identity.

Stradling demonstrates that the history of the state can be charted by means of epochs that represent stages in the development and redefinition of our relationship to our natural surroundings and the built environment- New York State has gone through cycles of deforestation and reforestation, habitat destruction and restoration that track shifts in population distribution, public policy, and the economy. Understanding these patterns, their history, and their future prospects is essential to comprehending the Empire State in all its complexity.

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

Historical Fiction: Secret of the White Rose

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2010 Edgar Award winning Author Stefanie Pintoff has a new novel of historic fiction set in turn-of-the-century New York, Secret of the White Rose.

The murder of Judge Hugo Jackson is out of Detective Simon Ziele’s jurisdiction in more ways than one. For one, it’s high-profile enough to command the attention of the notorious new police commissioner, since Judge Jackson was presiding over the sensational trial of Al Drayson. Drayson, an anarchist, set off a bomb at a Carnegie family wedding, but instead of killing millionaires, it killed passersbys, including a child. The dramatic trial captured the full attention of 1906 New York City.

Furthermore, Simon’s assigned precinct on Manhattan’s West Side includes the gritty Tenderloin but not the tonier Gramercy Park, which is where the judge is found in his locked town house with his throat slashed on the night before the jury is set to deliberate. But his widow insists on calling her husband’s old classmate criminologist, Alistair Sinclair, who in turn enlists Ziele’s help. Together they must steer Sinclair’s unorthodox methods past a police force that is so focused on rounding up Drayson’s supporters that they’ve all but rejected any other possibilities.

Stefanie Pintoff’s combination of characters and a fascinating case set amongst the sometimes brutal, sometimes glittering history of turn-of-the-century New York makes for compelling reading.

Pintofff, who won an Edgar Award Winner for her first novel, is a long-time New Yorker whose first two novels, In the Shadow of Gotham (April 2009), A Curtain Falls (May 2010) also cover early New York circa 1904-1906.

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

Jerry Jenkins to Receive Adirondack Museum Award

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The Board of Trustees of the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake, New York has announced the selection of Jerry Jenkins as the recipient of the 2011 Harold K. Hochschild Award.

The Harold K. Hochschild Award is dedicated to the memory of the museum’s founder, whose passion for the Adirondacks, its people, and environment inspired the creation of the Adirondack Museum. Since 1990 the museum has presented the award to a wide range of intellectual and community leaders throughout the Adirondack Park, highlighting their contributions to the region’s culture and quality of life.

The Adirondack Museum will formally present Jerry Jenkins with the Harold K. Hochschild Award on August 4, 2011.

Jerry Jenkins is an ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Adirondack Program (WCS). An accomplished botanist, naturalist and geographer, he has almost forty years of field experience working in the Northern Forest. Over the course of his career, his work has included conducting biological inventories for The Adirondack Chapter of the Nature
Conservancy, surveying rare plant occurrences for the State of Vermont, chronicling the environmental history of acid rain with the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation, and understanding and interpreting historical changes to boreal lowland areas in the Adirondacks with WCS. His enthusiasm for natural history has also led him to study plant diversity and distribution across various forest types &#8211 from the Champlain Hills to large working forest
easements, and from old growth forests to high elevation alpine communities.

His most recent and notable accomplishments with the Wildlife Conservation Society are his collection of Adirondack publications. Together with Andy Keal, Jerry Jenkins co-authored The The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park, considered one of the most significant Adirondack book in a generation. Some 300 pages in length, the Adirondack Atlas contains 750
maps and graphics, and represents the most comprehensive collection of regional data brought together in a single source. The park’s geology, flora and fauna are featured, as well as the history and the dynamic nature of the park’s human communities. Bill McKibben describes the atlas as a &#8220great gift&#8230-that marks a coming of age.&#8221

In his newest book Climate Change in the Adirondacks the Path to Sustainability, Jenkins demonstrates how climate change is already shifting the region’s culture, biology and economy, and provides a road map towards a more responsible and sustainable future. He provides the first comprehensive look at both the impacts of, and the potential solutions to, climate change across the Adirondack region. This compilation, along with his other regional contributions, prompted Bill McKibben to offer that &#8220Jerry Jenkins has emerged as the information source for our mountains&#8230-and we are all in his debt.&#8221

Photo Courtesy Leslie Karasin, Wildlife Conservation Society.

Saranac Laboratory Focus of Tour, Book Event

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Historic Saranac Lake is preparing for the visit of Patricia Reiss Brooks on July 20th. Brooks, the author of Mountain Shadows, will head a walking tour starting at the Saranac Laboratory Museum, 89 Church Street, Saranac Lake at 10:30 am. The free event includes an inside look of the Morse Cure Cottage on Shepard St. that is just like the cottage where the characters in Mountain Shadows play out their lives. The walk will continue on to the Cure Cottage Museum on Helen Hill.

The walk will be followed by a brown bag lunch at the Saranac Laboratory, where Brooks will talk about gathering information for the creation of Mountain Shadows and will include glimpses into the life in the area in the twenties. Brooks will entertain questions and autograph copies of Mountain Shadows. A portion of all sales will benefit Historic Saranac Lake.

Mountain Shadows is an historic love story that portrays the Cure Cottage life for TB patients as well as the Prohibition era rum-running, the Lake Placid Club, the Adirondack area at the time, and the early treatment of tuberculosis in Saranac Lake.

Brooks is a native of Lake Placid and a graduate of St. Bernards and Lake Placid Central. Her father, Julian Reiss came to the area in the twenties to “take the cure.” He stayed to raise his family, never leaving the mountains that gave him back his health.

Historic Saranac Lake, the event’s sponsor, is a not for profit architectural preservation organization that captures and presents local history from their center at the Saranac Laboratory Museum. In case of rain, just the chat with the author and booking signing will start at noon at the Saranac Laboratory, 89 Church St.