Damnation Island

“A riveting character-driven dive into 19th-century New York and the extraordinary history of Blackwell’s Island.” —Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica On a two-mile stretch of land in New York’s East River, a 19th-century horror story was unfolding . . . Today we call it Roosevelt Island. Then, it was Blackwell’s, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals. Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world ever seen, Blackwell’s Island quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, “a lounging, listless madhouse.” In the first contemporary investigative account of Blackwell’s, Stacy Horn tells this chilling narrative through the gripping voices of the island’s inhabitants, as well as the period’s officials, reformers, and journalists, including the celebrated Nellie Bly. Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Horn brings this forgotten history alive: there was terrible overcrowding; prisoners were enlisted to care for the insane; punishment was harsh and unfair; and treatment was nonexistent. Throughout the book, we return to the extraordinary Reverend William Glenney French as he ministers to Blackwell’s residents, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Department of Correction and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man’s inhumanity to man. In Damnation Island, Stacy Horn shows us how far we’ve come in caring for the least fortunate among us—and reminds us how much work still remains.

**Longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Nonfiction (2023)** **An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF 2023 SO FAR in BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR and HISTORY** **An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH (March 2023)** **A Bookshop.Org EDITOR'S PICK (March 2023)** “This is the story of one of the boldest women in American history: self-made millionaire, a celebrity in her era, a woman beloved by her patients and despised by the men who wanted to control them.” An industrious immigrant who built her business from the ground up, Madame Restell was a self-taught surgeon on the cutting edge of healthcare in pre-Gilded Age New York, and her bustling “boarding house” provided birth control, abortions, and medical assistance to thousands of women—rich and poor alike. As her practice expanded, her notoriety swelled, and Restell established her-self as a prime target for tabloids, threats, and lawsuits galore. But far from fading into the background, she defiantly flaunted her wealth, parading across the city in designer clothes, expensive jewelry, and bejeweled carriages, rubbing her success in the faces of the many politicians, publishers, fellow physicians, and religious figures determined to bring her down. Unfortunately for Madame Restell, her rise to the top of her field coincided with “the greatest scam you’ve never heard about”—the campaign to curtail women’s power by restricting their access to both healthcare and careers of their own. Powerful, secular men—threatened by women’s burgeoning independence—were eager to declare abortion sinful, a position endorsed by newly-minted male MDs who longed to edge out their feminine competition and turn medicine into a standardized, male-only practice. By unraveling the misogynistic and misleading lies that put women’s lives in jeopardy, Wright simultaneously restores Restell to her rightful place in history and obliterates the faulty reasoning underlying the very foundation of what has since been dubbed the “pro-life” movement. Thought-provoking, character-driven, boldly written, and feminist as hell, Madame Restell is required reading for anyone and everyone who believes that when it comes to women’s rights, women’s bodies, and women’s history, women should have the last word.

Just off the coast of the Bronx in Long Island Sound sits Hart Island, where more than one million bodies are buried in unmarked graves. Beginning as a Civil War prison and training site and later a psychiatric hospital, the location became the repository for New York City�s unclaimed dead. The island�s mass graves are a microcosm of New York history, from the 1822 burial crisis to casualties of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and victims of the AIDS epidemic. Important artists who died in poverty have been discovered, including Disney star Bobby Driscol and playwright Leo Birinski. Author Michael T. Keene reveals the history of New York�s potter�s field and the stories of some of its lost souls.

The choices that individuals make in moments of crisis can transform them. By focusing on fictional characters trapped on fictional islands, the book examines how individuals react when forced to make hard choices within the liminal space of a "prison" island. At stake is the perception of choice: do characters believe that they have the power to choose, or do they think that they are at the mercy of fate? The results reveal certain patterns--psychological, historical, social, and political--that exist across a variety of popular/public cultures and time periods. This book focuses on how the interplay between liminality and the Locus of Control theory creates dynamic sites of negotiated meaning. This psychological concept has never before been used for literary analysis. Offered here as an alternative to the defects of Freudian psychology, the Locus of Control theory has been proven reliable in thousands of studies, and the results have been found, with few exceptions, to be consistent in both women and men. That consistency is explored through close readings of islands found in popular culture books, films, and television shows, with suggestions for future research.

Poverty in Rural America: The Story of Yates County Home and Farm from 1830 to 1950 describes the development of poorhouses in New York State, providing an analysis of poverty and an impression of the societal attitudes toward those who were impoverished in the early nineteenth century. The reader is provided with an understanding of the workings and management of the Yates County Home and Farm as well as comparing it to the general issues of poverty and the solutions employed by the state. Throughout the book, the author has provided insights and discussion questions at the end of each chapter to prompt discussion and further analysis to provide insight into the impact upon the people involved. The book highlights the changes in philosophy of poverty and its solutions over the time of the operation of this poorhouse and the development of other social-service programs. This work would appeal to readers of history and of social change over time.

"A casually wondrous experience; it made me feel like the city was unfolding beneath my feet.” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror In place-names lie stories. That’s the truth that animates this fascinating journey through the names of New York City’s streets and parks, boroughs and bridges, playgrounds and neighborhoods. Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on the city’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that have gained iconic meaning worldwide. He interviews the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor’s forgotten islands, lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints, and meets linguists who study the estimated eight hundred languages now spoken in New York. As recent arrivals continue to find new ways to make New York’s neighborhoods their own, the names that stick to the city’s streets function not only as portals to explore the past but also as a means to reimagine what is possible now.

The rich are getting richer—and stone-cold dead—in the next installment in Kate Belli’s thrilling Gilded Gotham Mystery series, for fans of Rhys Bowen and Deanna Raybourn. Spring, 1890. The long New York winter is over, the buds are blossoming, and romance is in the air. But not all’s right in Gilded-Age Manhattan. Genevieve, a society journalist, and her fiancé, Daniel, are working with photographer Dagmar Hansen on an investigation into the House of Refuge, a children’s workhouse, inspired by Daniel’s near incarceration when he was young. Genevieve is also working on her own piece for the Globe about the Sunflower Mission House, which burned down in a suspicious fire. When a blaze consumes Dagmar’s studio—and Genevieve barely escapes with her life in another—Daniel urges her to stop her investigation. But Genevieve is determined to finish the story, and her leads take her deep into the heart of the Bowery. When Genevieve suddenly goes missing, Daniel searches the city in a desperate effort to find her. When their new Fifth Avenue home is also set ablaze, Daniel fears the worst. Someone has their sights on Genevieve—and if she can’t escape, she could be the next to go up in flames.

New York's Newsboys is a lively historical account of Charles Loring Brace's founding and development of the Children's Aid Society to combat a newly emerging social problem, youth homelessness, during the nineteenth century. Poor children slept on the docks, pilfered, and peddled cheap wares to survive, activities which frequently landed them in prison-like juvenile asylums. Brace offered a radical alternative, the Newsboys' Lodging House. From there he launched a network of additional programs, each respecting his clients' free will, contrasting with the policing interventions favored by other reformers. Over four decades Brace built a comprehensive child welfare agency which sought to alleviate suffering, prevent delinquency, and divert children from a life of poverty. Using primary documents and analysis of over 700 original CAS case records, New York's Newsboys offers a new way to look at the foundational roots of social work and child welfare in the United States. In this book, Karen Staller argues that the significance of this chapter in history to the profession, the city of New York, and the country has been under appreciated.