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Jews in America: From New Amsterdam to the Yiddish Stage

Stephen D. Corrsin, Amanda Seigel, and Kenneth Benson, The New York Public Library; introduction by Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

This richly illustrated book tells the fascinating story of the Jewish presence in America, from the earliest expeditions to the New World and the arrival in 1654 of the first group of Jews in the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (New York). Jonathan D. Sarna’s introduction traces pivotal changes in American Jewish life beginning in the colonial era. The volume draws from The New York Public Library’s remarkable holdings of American Judaica and other key collections, featuring rare books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, documents, and posters. The stories are brought to life with over 100 items, including the gorgeous Polyglot Psalter published in Genoa in 1516, a color 

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160 pages, with more than 100 illustrations, primarily in color. Published by The New York Public Library in association with D Giles Limited, London., 2012.

Hardcover. $39.00. ISBN: 978-1-904832-22-5.
Available online from The Library Shop

The New York Public Library: A Beaux-Arts Landmark

Ingrid Steffensen

New edition! Revised, updated, and with new illustrations In this lavishly illustrated NYPL classic, art historian Ingrid Steffensen traces the history of Carrère & Hastings’s architectural masterpiece, including the recent restoration of its monumental marble facade and decorative embellishments — fountains, attic figures, and pediment groups — to their original Beaux-Arts glory. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965, The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street is a defining presence in New York City. The building’s exterior ornamentation reflects one of the greatRead More ›

64 pages, 80 images, primarily in color. Published by The New York Public Library in association with Scala Publishers Ltd, 2011.

Paperback. $10.95. ISBN: 9781857597219.
Available online from The Library Shop

A Skeptic\'s Progress Image

Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress

Isaac Gewirtz

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 ›

141 pages.

Hardcover. $35.00.
Available online from The Library Shop

The Prompt Copy of A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens, introduction by Isaac Gewirtz

Go onstage with Charles Dickens as he performs his Christmas Carol.

Charles Dickens could not only write a crackling good story, he could perform it. And so in 1853, he took his Christmas Carol show on the road, first in Britain and then in the United States. Audiences loved it. Dickens didn't simply read from his book. He transformed it into a stageworthy script—cutting, pasting together pages of excised passages, adding stage cues for himself, rewriting, then cutting some more.

Such an annotated stage copy is called a prompt copy. There is only one such copy of A Christmas Carol, created by Dickens himself, and The New York PublicRead More ›

224 pages, full-color facsimile. Published by Levenger Press, 2009.

Fantasy Sports and the King of the Beats Image

Kerouac at Bat: Fantasy Sports and the King of the Beats

Isaac Gewirtz

In these records of his imaginary horse races and baseball games, and in the publications that accompanied them, we see both a true sports fanatic and a fledgling writer beginning to spread his mighty wings.

— 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 ›

76 pages, 50 images 4-color throughout. Published by The New York Public Library, 2009.

Hardcover. $25.00. ISBN: 978-0-87104-462-4.
Available online from The Library Shop

African Americans in Politics

Whether physically battling or fighting for representation through the legislative process, African Americans, against great resistance, have striven for progress and achieved success in American politics.  From the shocking violence of the Boston Massacre t the groundbreaking acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention of 2008, the twenty-nine images in this book of postcards present profound and pivotal moments and movements in African American history.

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Published by Pomegranate, 2009.

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Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City

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 ›

80 pages, 68 color and black-and-white photographs. Published by The New York Public Library, 2008.

Hardcover. $22.50. ISBN: 978-0-87104-460-0.
Available online from The Library Shop

Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance Image

Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance

Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, Alexis Greene, and Carrie Robbins

A collaboration between The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the League of Professional Theatre Women, Curtain Call explores the work and the role of distinguished women designing for theater, dance, and opera. Filled with more than 200 images, it features wonderful drawings, photographs, and other artifacts from the  collections of the Performing Arts Library from the late 19th century to the 1950s, as well as the innovative creations of designers from 1960 to the present -- costumes, sketches, set models, lighting designs, and more. Enhanced by interviews with contemporary designers, Curtain Call provides a view behind the curtain that expands uponRead More ›

112 pages, More than 200 color images. Published by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the League of Professional Theatre Women , 2008.

Hardcover. $20.00. ISBN: 978-0-9773074-1-8.
Available online from The Library Shop

New York Theater 1850-1970 Image

Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater 1850-1970

Leonard Jacobs

“. . .   an amazing, remarkable and hard-to-put-down book.”

— 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 ›

254 pages, 240 b/w images. Published by Turner Publishing Company, 2008.

Hardcover. $39.95. ISBN: 978-1-59652-362-3.
Available online from The Library Shop

Afghanistan or The Perils of Freedom

Photographs by Stephen Dupont; with essays by Stephen Dupont and Jacques Menasche; edited by Stephen C. Pinson

In Afghanistan, award-winning Australian photographer Stephen Dupont has covered everything from civil war and the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s to the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom and the ongoing war on terrorism. This book features selections from his portfolio Afghanistan, 1993-2008, as well as photographs from the series Axe Me Biggie, whose title is a phonetic rendering of the Dari for “Mister, take my picture!”  Dupont made these portraits during the course of one day (March 13, 2006) with a Polaroid camera in a makeshift studio in the streets of Kabul. Together, these photographs tell a story of poverty, warfare, and broken promises, but also ofRead More ›

48 pages, Black and white photography throughout. Published by The New York Public Library, 2008.

Paperback. $22.50. ISBN: 978-0-87104-463-1.
Available online from The Library Shop

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