You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II - Softcover

Kisseloff, Jeff

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9780805209792: You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805209794 ISBN 13: 9780805209792

Publisher: Schocken, 1990

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Daily life in Manhattan between the turn of the century and World War II is recounted in the voices of New Yorkers who grew up in those years. Kisseloff supplies brief historical introductions to each of the city's neighborhoods and photos of people and places.

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From the Back Cover:

In You Must Remember This, Jeff Kisseloff brings together 137 New Yorkers who witnessed daily life in Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II. Dividing the city into ten neighborhoods and devoting a chapter and about a dozen voices to each, Kisseloff offers a brief historical introduction, then lets the eyewitnesses speak for themselves. We hear a survivor's account of the harrowing Triangle Shirtwaist fire as well as tales of the sweatshops, the settlement houses, and the immigrants from around the world who poured into the Lower East Side at the turn of the century. There are vignettes of John Reed, Louise Bryant, Eugene O'Neill, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. We read of the bloody beginnings of the seamen's union and, down the street from the docks, visit with Thomas Wolfe and Edgar Lee Masters in the Hotel Chelsea. In Harlem, the Savoy and the cotton Club were in their heyday, as were Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, and Adam Clayton Powell. Throughout the book, Kisseloff engages us in a unique conversation between an all-but-bygone time and our own.

About the Author:

Jeff Kisseloff, a native New Yorker, is the author of The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961. He is a veteran reporter and editor and the grandson of one of the country's first TV dealers. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, and lives in New York City.

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