Mark Twain's life (1835–1910) spanned an era that witnessed the transformation of America and the world by the Industrial Revolution. With the expansion of transportation, manufacturing, and communications technology, the focus of American life in the North began to shift from its farms and small towns to its cities. For Twain, such technological, industrial, and urban developments were the means by which America might become a more prosperous and just society and also realize the nineteenth-century ideal of universal progress. But his conflicted love affair with his native South and its rural culture and traditions, his close observation of the natural world, and hisRead More ›

— Isaac Gewirtz

As a child and adolescent, Beat writer Jack Kerouac expressed his love of sports by creating rich fantasy worlds centered on baseball and, briefly, Thoroughbred horse racing. He recorded the exploits of his imaginary horses, jockeys, trainers, and owners in tout sheets and news sheets for only two years, 1936 and 1937, but he continued to develop his baseball game, which he probably began playing at age nineRead More ›

Eminent Domain features selections from recent photographic projects by five contemporary New York-based photographers: Thomas Holton's The Lams of Ludlow Street, an empathetic account of one family's daily life in Chinatown and a photographer's personal quest to better understand his own heritage; Bettina Johae's borough edges, nyc, a digital project exploring the edges of the city's five boroughs, which the photographer traversed as a way of "remapping" the supposedly well-known city; Reiner Leist's Window, a series of views taken each day over an 11-year period that capture a slice of Manhattan including One Penn Plaza, Madison Square Garden, and, until September 11, 2001, theRead More ›

— Talk Entertainment, Oscar E. Moore

With 240 carefully selected photographs and memorabilia from the Library's acclaimed Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater 1850-1970 celebrates the Great White Way, the undisputed pinnacle of success and achievement on the American stage. Dating from the 1850s to the recent past, these images give insight into the passion and character of the theaters, the performers, and the performances that have made Broadway the iconic cultural capital of theater. With hundreds of images,Read More ›