Arnold Foster: Walter Lippman: An Intellectual Biography
Interviewed by Rob Snyder
From the years before World War I until the late 1960s, the journalist and political theorist Walter Lippmann was one of the most influential writers in the United States of America. His words and ideas had a powerful impact on American liberalism and his writings on the media, particularly on stereotyping and journalistic objectivity, are still taught today. Lippmann is now the subject of Tom Arnold-Forster’s Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography, published by Princeton University Press. Arnold-Forster explores Lippmann in his evolving historical context, from the Progressive Era to the Cold War. He argues that Lippmann was a much more complicated thinker than is usually recognized who went from being a liberal socialist to a conservative liberal.
Operation Sail 1976: How New York City Came Together in a Time of Crisis
By Angelina Lambros
The On July 4, 1976, New York City celebrated the Bicentennial of American independence with a parade of ships that began at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and moved up the Hudson River. Officially titled “Operation Sail,” more than 200 ships gathered for the event. With more than six million spectators, it became the largest crowd in New York City’s history. For America's largest city where people regularly turned out for special events, Operation Sail proved truly exceptional.
Shirley Chisholm at 100: An Interview with Zinga Fraser and Sarah Seidman
Interviewed By Dominique Jean-Louis
“I think what connects Chisholm to this political moment is how 1972 was also a time of political turmoil and conflict between a true representative democracy and political autocracy in the form of the Nixon administration. Today, Chisholm would be in the fight for our nation to not fall prey to political leadership that does not believe they are accountable to the Constitution or the American people.”
The Secret Man Behind the World’s Most Visible Building
By Jason M. Barr and Ann Berman
And yet almost all the stories about the origins of this New York landmark [the Empire State Building], online and in print, are inaccurate. They all omit the pivotal, behind-the-scenes role played by Louis Graveraet Kaufman (LGK) (1870-1942), the secret schemer, without whom the Empire State Building would not have been built. LGK’s hidden machinations irrevocably changed Gotham — and world — history, yet few today know his name.
From 1949 until his death in 1997, Murray Kempton was a distinct presence in New York City journalism. Peddling around town on a three-speed bicycle wearing a three-piece suit, he wrote about everything from politics to jazz to the Mafia. His writing was eloquent, his perspective unique, and his moral judgements driven by a profound sympathy for losers, dissenters and underdogs. […] Going Around: Selected Journalism / Murray Kempton (Seven Stories Press, 2025), edited by Andrew Holter, brings Kempton’s work to old admirers and a new generation of readers.
The Era Was Lost: The Rise and Fall of New York City’s Rank and File Rebels
Review By Benjamin Serby
Dyer laments that “a politically self-aware working class” no longer exists anywhere in the United States, including New York City. It would seem that until something profoundly shifts in our political culture, workers will simply defend what they already have rather than push for more. With longstanding institutional, legal, and economic arrangements in nothing short of crisis, perhaps this is the moment when the wheel of history — stalled fifty years ago — finally begins to turn once more.
Cultural Diversity, Ethnic Tensions, and Economic Marginality in an Early Bronx Settlement — Part 2
By Marian Swerdlow
Only one church building from the time of the ancient Village still stands, the former Potts Memorial Church on Washington Avenue. As for the “successor” buildings these congregations moved into after the dissolution of the Village, three of them — the former St. John’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church on Fulton Avenue, the First Congregational Church of Morrisania on Forest Avenue, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Washington Avenue — still stand, although just outside the borders of the ancient Village. The latter two retain their original congregations. Each of the three is a beautiful building in a very different style, and each well worth a visit. The demolitions of the magnificent third St. Augustine’s church (1895 - 2013), and of the historic former Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church (2019), are part of the story of an area that has been one of the poorest in New York City for over half a century.
Cultural Diversity, Ethnic Tensions, and Economic Marginality in an Early Bronx Settlement — Part 1
By Marian Swerdlow
The Village of Morrisania, founded in 1848, was the first area west of the Bronx River to be densely settled in what today is the Bronx. Despite this historic significance, almost nothing has been published about it in the past century, possibly because of the scarcity of resources in the community that is today in the ancient Village’s footprint.
Davida Siwisa James: Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill
Interviewed by Rob Snyder
Davida Siwisa James explores two parts of Harlem in her book Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries, published by the Empire State Editions imprint of Fordham University Press. Exploring four centuries of life in a part of upper Manhattan that stretches from 135th Street to 165th Street and from Edgecombe Avenue to the Hudson River, James looks at the encounters between the Lenape and Dutch settlers, the rural village that was Harlem, and the Harlem Renaissance luminaries who lived in Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill.
Which Way to the Promised Land? Mabel Lee at the Intersection of Gender and Race
By Mimi Yang
Oppressed people across cultures embrace the Exodus narrative, in which Moses delivers the Israelites from slavery, as a source of hope and strength. “The Promised Land” has become more than a physical locale for modern-day seekers; it represents a cultural and spiritual sphere that offers freedom, equality, and fulfillment. Mabel Ping Hua Lee (李彬华1896 – 1966), a Chinese feminist whose work and commitment was on par with her contemporary suffragists, also sought the Promised Land — a place for a better life and dreams for happiness and fulfillment. New York City entered Lee’s life as the gate, the world, and the destiny of her Promised Land. Intriguingly, her feminism and dedication to securing the universal right to vote originated from a seemingly distant cultural background.
