Podcast Interview: All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York
Rob Snyder Interviewed by Bruce Cory
All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Robert W. Snyder (Columbia University Press, 2019) covers almost 500 years of New York City’s still unfolding story of cultural diversity and political conflict, economic dynamism and unmatched human diversity.
Podcast Interview: Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York
Edgardo Meléndez Interviewed by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskoff
Edgardo Meléndez's book Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York (Centro Press, 2019) examines the activities and ideals of Puerto Rican revolutionary exiles in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century. The study is centered in the writings, news reports, and announcements by and about Puerto Ricans in Patria, the official newspaper of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Both were founded and led by the Cuban patriot José Martí.
Kara Murphy Schlichting Interviewed by Garrett Reed Gutierrez
In New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore, Kara Murphy Schlichting offers a fresh perspective on New York City’s history by shifting readers’ gaze away from Manhattan and towards the coastal periphery—where local planning initiatives, waterfront park building, the natural environment, and a growing leisure economy each had a stake in the regional development of New York City. Schlichting’s regional and environmental approach frames New York’s extensive waterways as points of connection that unite, rather than divide, the urban core and periphery to one another.
The Chinese Lady: An Interview with Nancy E. Davis
Interviewed by Hongdeng Gao
Today on the blog, editor Hongdeng Gao speaks to Nancy E. Davis about her recent book, The Chinese Lady: Afong Moy in Early America. Through creative use of disparate sources from many years of research, Davis captures the experiences of Afong Moy — the first recognized Chinese woman to arrive in America — as she introduced exotic goods from the East, as well as Chinese life, to the American public. The book provides rich insights into how Afong Moy’s presence changed Americans’ views of China and influenced American popular and material culture. It also sheds light on New York City’s role in the early US-China trade and the rise of the global marketplace.
In the political ferment of early 20th century New York City, when socialists and reformers battled sweatshops, and writers and artists thought a new world was being born, an immigrant Jewish woman from Russia appeared in the Yiddish press, in Carnegie Hall, and at rallies. Her name was Rose Pastor Stokes, and she fought for socialism, contraception and workers’ rights.
In Radical Imagination, Radical Humanity: Puerto Rican Political Activism in New York, Rose Muzio analyzes how structural and historical factors — including colonialism, economic marginalization, racial discrimination, and the Black and Brown Power movements of the 1960s — influenced young Puerto Ricans to reject mainstream ideas about political incorporation and join others in struggles against perceived injustices. This analysis provides the first in-depth account of the origins, evolution, achievements, and failures of El Comité-Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueño, one of the main organizations of the Puerto Rican Left in the 1970s in New York City.
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Willie Mack speaks to filmmaker and geographer Brett Story about her book, Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America. Story reexamines the prison as a set of social relations which includes property, race, gender, and class across the urban landscape. In this way, Story demonstrates how carceral power is distributed outside of the prisons walls to include racially segregated communities, gentrifying urban spaces, and even mass transit.
The Invention of Public Space: An Interview with Mariana Mogilevich
Interviewed by Katie Uva
Today on the blog, editor Katie Uva speaks to Mariana Mogilevich about her recent book, The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York.Mogilevich discusses the 1960s and 1970s as a uniquely inventive time in the city for defining and conceptualizing the use of public space. At a time when New York was dealing with deindustrialization, economic decline, and suburbanization, the Lindsay Administration made a conscious effort to develop inviting public space and support public interaction in city spaces, an attempt to lift up the city’s density and shared space as an asset rather than a liability.
The Doctors Blackwell: An Interview with Janice Nimura
Interviewed by Katie Uva
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Katie Uva speaks to Janice Nimura, author of The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine. The book is a joint biography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and her sister Emily Blackwell, the third woman to do so. The book examines the Blackwells’ struggle to obtain training and credentials in the increasingly professionalized field of medicine in the 19th century, and also provides insights into 19th century New York as a place of opportunity and obstacles for these groundbreaking women.
The Sustainability Myth: An Interview with Melissa Checker
Interviewed by Katie Uva
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Katie Uva speaks to Melissa Checker about her recent book, The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice. In it, Checker examines and critiques current frameworks of sustainability in New York, where sustainability and economic development are often seen as goals that are mutually supporting. Checker argues that this belief leads to gentrification, deepens economic inequality, and even winds up worsening environmental conditions in some parts of the city.
