"A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard"-- "Only a few select people enjoy unrestricted access to every nook and cranny of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and among them are the guards who keep a watchful eye on the two-million-square-foot treasure house. For Bringley, the Museum was a temporary refuge that became his home away from...

In this memoir, singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City : the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's and Strand bookstores and her new life in Brooklyn with a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe--the man who changed her life with his love, friendship, and genius.

Traces the author's upbringing in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, describing the strict rules that governed her life, arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, and the birth of her son, which led to her plan to leave and forge her own path in life.

Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. Taunted at school she skipped classes, winding up in a girls' home and eventually, at fifteen, on the street. When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she became determined to go back to school. This is the unforgettable and beautifully written story of how Liz, while homeless, squeezed four years of school into two, won a New York Times scholarship, and made it into Harvard. (Bestseller)...

J.R. Moehringer grew up listening for a voice: the sound of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before J.R. spoke his first words. As a boy, he would press his ear to a radio, straining to hear the keys to his own identity. His mother was his world, his anchor, but he needed something else, something he couldn't name. So he turned to the bar on the corner, a grand old New York saloon that was a sanctuary for all types of men--cops and...

In a riveting, groundbreaking narrative, Russell Shorto tells the story of New Netherland, the Dutch colony which pre-dated the Pilgrims and established ideals of tolerance and individual rights that shaped American history. 
"Astonishing . . . A book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past." —The New York Times
When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its...

"'There are certain women,' Truman Capote wrote, 'who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.' Barbara 'Babe' Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy's sister) -- they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. These women captivated and enchanted Capote -- and at times, they infuriated him as well. He befriended them,...

Single, thirtysomething, working as a writer in New York City, Kristin Kimball was living life as an adventure. But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home. When she interviewed a dynamic young farmer, her world changed. Kristin knew nothing about growing vegetables, let alone raising pigs and cattle and driving horses. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres...

What would you give up to achieve your dream? When J. P. Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene in 1905 to organize his rare book and manuscript collection, she had only her personality and a few years of experience to recommend her. Ten years later, she had shaped the famous Pierpont Morgan Library collection and was a proto-celebrity in New York and the art world, renowned for her self-made expertise, her acerbic wit, and her flirtatious relationships....

"Sure to become the definitive account of the fire. . . . Triangle is social history at its best, a magnificent portrayal not only of the catastrophe but also of the time and the turbulent city in which it took place." -The New York Times Book Review. This is a poignantly detailed account of the 1911 disaster that horrified the country and changed the course of twentieth-century politics and labor relations. On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting...