This is the astonishing illicit history of Hudson, New York, which for many years was the unlikely setting for a world of prostitution, gambling, murder, and government corruption?with more than a touch of the Keystone Kops thrown in. In the century or so before 1950, Hudson was famous as a shopping center of vice. There were at least two major illegal horse rooms, a big-stakes floating crap game, and as many as fifteen houses of ill repute. Meanwhile, the church suppers took place and the parades marched up and down as Hudson's respectable citizenry convinced themselves that there was nothing out of the ordinary in this town described as, ?ten streets wide and ten streets deep... a Norman Rockwell painting in motion.?
Audrey Vernick and Steven Salerno have again collaborated to bring us a captivating picture book about a compelling but little-known piece of baseball history. Beginning in 1922, when Edith Houghton was only ten years old, she tried out for a women’s professional baseball team, the Philadelphia Bobbies. Though she was the smallest on the field, soon reporters were talking about “The Kid” and her incredible skill, and crowds were packing the stands to see her play. Her story reminds us that baseball has never been about just men and boys. Baseball is also about talented girls willing to work hard to play any way they can.
Hatton Garden is one of the most secret streets in England, home for two centuries to a deeply private working community of diamond and jewellery dealers. Intimately connected to the area both personally (her family run a jewellery business there) and professionally (as an artist archivist of London's streets), Rachel Lichtenstein is uniquely placed to explore the extraordinary history of this mysterious quarter, with its ancient burial sites, diamond workshops, underground vaults, subterranean rivers, monastic dynasties and forgotten palaces. Moving beyond the street itself into parts of Clerkenwell, Holborn and Farringdon, Rachel follows the ancient perimeter of the original Hatton Garden estate, which once bordered the lost River Fleet. Guided on her walks by archaeologists, sewer flushers, artists, goldsmiths, geologists and visionaries of the city such as Iain Sinclair, she crosses the same territory repeatedly, gathering new layers of the story with each journey. The result is a brilliantly immersive and multi-layered portrait; both a documentary and a secret history of a vanishing world.
A guide for developers of affordable housing on how to work with the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Contents: benefits of rehabilitating historic buildings for affordable housing (benefits to owners and developers, benefits to tenants, benefits to the community, a successful approach to rehabilitation, and solving common design issues in historic buildings); and 11 case studies of successful projects. Appendices: Federal section 106 review; state and local environmental review; and historic building codes. Glossary and bibliography.
Cat Royal has long red hair, green eyes, and not a penny of her own. But she does know where a treasure is hidden in the theater that is her home. The problem is, she isn't the only one looking for it, in this mystery set in 18th-century London.
Searching for John Hughes is Jason Diamond’s hilarious memoir of growing up obsessed with the iconic filmmaker’s movies. From the outrageous, raunchy antics in National Lampoon’s Vacation to the teenage angst in The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink to the insanely clever and unforgettable Home Alone, Jason Diamond could not get enough of John Hughes’ films. So, he set off on a years-long delusional, earnest, and assiduous quest to write a biography of his favorite filmmaker, despite having no qualifications, training, background, platform, or direction. In Searching for John Hughes, Jason tells how a Jewish kid from a broken home in a Chicago suburb—sometimes homeless, always restless—found comfort and connection in the likewise broken lives in the suburban Chicago of John Hughes’ oeuvre. He moved to New York to become a writer of a book he had no business writing. In the meantime, he brewed coffee and guarded cupcake cafes. All the while, he watched John Hughes movies religiously. Though his original biography of Hughes has long since been abandoned, Jason has discovered he is a writer through and through. And the adversity of going for broke has now been transformed into wisdom. Or, at least, a really, really good story. In other words, this is a memoir of growing up. One part big dream, one part big failure, one part John Hughes movies, one part Chicago, and one part New York. It’s a story of what comes after the “Go for it!” part of the command to young creatives to pursue their dreams—no matter how absurd they might seem at first.
