New York in Black and White

J. Edgar Hoover in a Mickey Mouse mask at the Stork Club in 1937; Salvador Dalí being photographed by Girl Scouts in 1960; then U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani with a vial of crack he purchased during a 1986 investigation—these are just a few of the scenes in New York Exposed: Photographs from the Daily News, from the newspaper that calls itself "New York's Hometown Paper." Culling the archives from its inception in 1919 to New Year's 2000, Daily News picture editor Shawn O'Sullivan has come up with 320 iconic duotone shots of everyday New York, introduced by former News editor Pete Hamill (A Drinking Life), and on view at New York's AXA Gallery from November 1 to December 29. One shot from New York Harbor includes the World Trade Center. (Abrams, $39.95 320p ISBN 0-8109-4305-0; Dec.)

Cityscapes: A History of New York in Images, part of Columbia's History of Urban Life Series, features hundreds of photographs, drawings, advertisements, cartoons, paintings and maps from New York's myriad eras and incarnations. Authors Howard B. Rock (The New York City Artisan), a history professor at Florida International University, and Deborah Dash Moore (At Home in America), a religion professor at Vassar College, trace Gotham's history from its early 17th-century inception as New Amsterdam through the 20th century. Compelling images of sites and events like Wall Street then and now, of tenement houses over the years, of postwar Times Square and an 1812 Fourth of July parade appear on every page. A six-page section is devoted to the construction of the World Trade Center. This well-produced book gives loving and scholarly treatment to the endlessly varied people and places of New York. (Columbia Univ., $60 460p ISBN 0-231-11962-3; Oct.)

Lynne B. Sagalyn, director of the MBA real estate program at Columbia University's business school, explores the underpinnings of New York's concerted mid-1990s gentrification efforts in Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon. Alongside the usual suspects—Giuliani, Disney, the ousted peep shows and porn venues—Sagalyn places Koch, the Broadway Association, "maverick realtor" Irving Maidman, Frederic S. Papert and his not-for-profit 42nd Street Development Corp., and a host of other major and minor players in the continual plans for redeveloping Times Square. By the 1960s, '70s and '80s, the area had become a blatant symbol of the decline of urban America, a far cry from its glory days in the 1920s as the pinnacle of theatrical couture. On the other hand, when redevelopment plans threatened too drastic a face-lift, critics waxed nostalgic about "the symbolic soul of New York." The jumble of symbolisms, politics, policies and business plans characterizing 20th-century 42nd Street has never before been subject to such thorough and perspicacious scrutiny. 175 illus., 25 in color. (MIT, $59.95 550p ISBN 0-262-19462-7; Dec.)

In November, Abrams presents two tributes to esteemed cartoon artist Al Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld's New York by Clare Bell accompanies an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York and showcases more than 100 drawings spanning his career so far, from the 1920s through the '90s. No one and no place is safe from his gaze: Greenwich Village denizens in 1941 imitating "movie folks in dress and manner"; wartime Broadway on a Saturday night; Upper West Side intelligentsia (including Irving Howe and Jason Epstein) thronging Zabar's in the '70s. ($15.95 paper 96p ISBN 0-8109-2974-0) New York's left coast rival gets similar treatment in Hirschfeld's Hollywood. David Leopold, Hirschfeld's archivist, assembles 115 caricatures of celebrities, movie posters, press-book pages and more to accompany an exhibit at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The book encompasses Hollywood phenoms from Capra's You Can't Take It with You from 1938, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in 1945's Girl Crazy, The Manchurian Candidate and Saving Private Ryan. ($15.95 paper 96p ISBN -9052-0)

Urban Excavations

In The Pig and the Skyscraper—Chicago: A History of Our Future, Italian author and journalist Marco d'Eramo turns his gimlet eye on the Windy City's 170-year social geography. The first of d'Eramo's books to be translated into English (by Graeme Thomson), this gritty cultural criticism falls in line with City of Quartz by Mike Davis (who provides a foreword) as it pries open the history of the stockyards, Gold Coast skyscrapers, slaughterhouses, Miracle Mile mansions, the Cabrini-Green housing project, the Sears Tower, the Mafiosi and the inner-city gangs, the Mayors Daley, the police force, the unions, the Black Power movement and so on. Beginning with the railroads, which wiped out "entire herds of buffalo," made the city "black with coal dust" and called for the importation of hundreds of Chinese laborers, d'Eramo astutely traces Chicago's craggy sociopolitical continuum. Photos. (Verso, $30 480p ISBN 1-85984-624-6; Nov. 8)

Nine Bosnian photographers present 130 color and b & w photographs of their ravaged homeland, accompanied by statements about the process of documenting the war in Sarajevo Self-Portrait: The View from Inside, compiled by freelance photographer Leslie Fratkin. These war and postwar images will resonate particularly sharply with American viewers following September 11. Alongside his images of children playing with dolls and wooden guns in the devastated city of Zenica, Mladen Pikulic describes his decision to show "the normal life of children" during the war. Kemal Hadzic, a former Bosnian soldier, shows before-and-after images of 500-year-old Islamic architecture destroyed in the war, as well as portraits of his fellow soldiers; Danilo Krstanovic shows civilian victims lying where they fell in 1992 and people in food lines behind sniper screens. (Umbrage Editions [PowerHouse, dist.], $45 164p ISBN 1-884167-03-9; Oct.)

The director of the Agora excavations of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, John M. Camp (The Athenian Agora), presents a masterful interdisciplinary compendium, The Archaeology of Athens. Camp, also a classics professor at Randolph-Macon College, draws from Herodotus, Aristotle, Plutarch, Pausanias and inscriptions found at various sites; on the temple on the Acropolis it reads, among numerous details, "Two leaves of gold were bought for gilding the two eyes of the column, from Adonis, living in Melite: 2 drachmas." He also describes the men responsible for various building projects (Perikles, e.g., gets his due), the buildings' uses and, in some cases, their destruction—parts of the Acropolis were brought down, for instance, during the Peloponnesian War. Though Athenian art and architecture have been paid consistent scholarly attention, perhaps no volume has so successfully mined the riches of literature and history (along with 257 b & w and 19 color illustrations) in pursuit of archeological evidence. (Yale Univ., $39.95 352p ISBN 0-300-08197-9; Jan.)

Stewarding world history and culture, the World Monument Fund offers both a warning call and a reassurance in Vanishing Histories: 100 Endangered Sites from the World Monuments Watch by Colin Amory with Brian Curran. From Vienna's baroque Belvedere Gardens, Tbilisi's Ottoman-influenced historic district in the republic of Georgia and the 13th-century terraced vineyards in Liguria, Italy, to Cambodia's 12th-century Banteay Chhmar Temple of Jayavarman VII, Cairo's ancient public water distribution centers and Peru's Machu Picchu, the authors provide brief descriptions of the origins, uses, decline and, in many cases, restoration of sites all over the world. Buildings on the south end of Ellis Island, right under New Yorkers' noses, are dangerously fragile and await planned preservation; Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park has undergone extensive preservation efforts. Thoughtful presentation and 222 beautiful photographs (138 in color) make this an ideal gift for travelers and historians. (Abrams, $60 208p ISBN 0-8109-1435-2; Nov.)

African-American Images

In Sepia Dreams: A Celebration of Black Achievement Through Words and Images, prominent entertainment photographer Matthew Jordan Smith's color and sepia-toned images and interviews with 50 black luminaries appear alongside Dionne Bennett's text and Vanessa Williams's introduction. Designer Karl Kani describes the clothing industry barriers for black designers and reveals the inspiration for his label: " 'Can I?' has always been my question: Can I really achieve success... ?... So I just kind of put [my first name] Karl and 'Can I' together...." Lena Horne recounts refusing to sing on MGM's WWII tour unless black soldiers were included in the audience. Iman, Samuel L. Jackson, Reggie Miller, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Missy Elliott are among the other featured celebrities. (St. Martin's, $29.95 224p ISBN 0-312-27817-9; Nov.)

In a collection of photographs and testimonials called Sisterfriends: Portraits of Sisterly Love, Pulitzer-nominated photographer Michelle V. Agins and author Julia Chance (coauthor, Fine Beauty) celebrate bonds between African-American women, both famous and unknown. Bonded by blood and/or love, these women testify to the power of shared experience. A group of 10 literal sisters spanning many ages take a "sisters retreat" and do away with "Sister Negativity." Oprah Winfrey's beloved best friend, Gail King, and her sisters laugh about Gail's fame-by-proxy. Mary J. Blige's older sister, LaTonya, recalls feeling responsible for little Mary. Betty Shabazz's daughters, bell hooks and her sister and Max Roach's daughters talk about their childhood and adult relationships. (Pocket Books, $28.50 224p ISBN 0-671-03713-7; Nov.)

The Holiday Season

"You are Santa Claus when you decide to be the person you have always been," observes Nick Kelsh in his inspirational guidebook, How to Be Santa Claus. What was Santa like as a child? What if Santa's a woman? Does Santa worry about his weight? Having donned his red suit and beard and crashed a neighbor's Christmas party last year, Kelsh is equipped to answer these and other questions: how to laugh like Santa, look like Santa ("Santa wears real boots"), give like Santa and feel like Santa. With color photos, warmth and wit, this quirky little holiday volume will delight readers and be a popular gift book. (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $14.95 48p ISBN 1-58479-089-X; Dec.)

Christmas enthusiasts young and old will enjoy Frank Crocitto's nostalgic, near—magic realist take on Christmas in the hazy recesses of the mid-20th century, A Child's Christmas in Brooklyn. Evoking the breathless, wide-eyed wonder of childhood, Crocitto (Insight Is Better Than Ice Cream) describes the interminable wait throughout the fall, homework in November, parents and grandparents' delightfully suspicious preholiday behaviors and the incomprehensibly somber Christmas Eve service. While it offers little new in terms of holiday spirit (following in the stylistic and thematic footsteps of A Christmas Story, though less comical), readers will be pleased by the classic, cozy quality of this reminiscence. Illus. (Candlepower [P.O. Box 787, New Paltz, N.Y. 12561], $10.95 96p ISBN 0-9677558-2-4; Nov.)

Penelope S. Duffy's brief memoir A Stockbridge Homecoming: The True Story of a Family's Journey is fraught with suspense and infused with tenderness and hope. Her father, a missionary, takes his family to China in the mid-1940s, before Mao Zedong's victory seems likely. The political situation quickly becomes dangerous for Americans, husband is separated from wife and children, and the Communist revolution is in full force. Duffy, born in China, recounts the story she heard again and again growing up—her father caught on the other side of enemy lines, the brave Chinese people who helped him, her sister's tuberculosis, her mother's stoicism. Returning to the U.S. and Duffy's father's new job in time for the holidays, the family finds a haven beyond their fondest hopes. (Bright Sky [Sterling, dist.], $11.95 128p ISBN 0-9709987-0-8; Nov.)

Weird Science

With publishers offering books on everything from extreme sea kayaking to extreme chess, one wonders what subject can't be slapped with that overused adjective. Certainly science can—and legitimately, too. From the editors of Scientific American comes the Extreme Science series, which gathers the magazine's most interesting and unusual material into accessible, themed collections complete with black-and-white diagrams and photos. In energized, highly accessible prose, The Highway of Light and Other Man-Made Wonders offers chapters on "The Seven Wonders of Modern Astronomy" and "Flywheels in Hybrid Vehicles," while Transplanting Your Head and Other Feats of the Future ponders the mysteries of medicine and biotechnology with sections on cloning, gene therapy and disease. (St. Martin's/Griffin, $14.95 paper 256p each Highway ISBN 0-312-26820-3; Transplanting -26819-X; Nov.)

Even if "after many thousands of years we are no closer than we ever were to being able to say what time is," editor Stuart McCready and his eclectic, learned team of contributors are willing to tackle at least the human perception of it. In The Discovery of Time, scientists and philosophers weigh in on the mysteries of circadian rhythms, the particulars of different calendar systems, the mechanics of timepieces and the infinity puzzles that have confounded people for eons. Complementing the text are quotes from poets and psalms, a glossary of terms and gorgeous color plates depicting everything from etchings on an Egyptian sarcophagus to the Hubble space telescope. (Sourcebooks, $24.95 256p ISBN 1-57071-675-7; Nov.)

October Publication

The one-time owner of Kirkus Reviews, James B. Kobak, imparts magazine-industry wisdom in How to Start a Magazine. Moving from the conceptual to the practical, Kobak approaches his lesson in five parts: trends and statistics about the business; steps in starting a new magazine (mission statements, business plans, pilot issues, testing through single-copy sales, etc.); the major operations involved in publishing a magazine (i.e., editorial, production, marketing, circulation); magazine as brand ("It earns the loyalty, friendship and confidence of its readers as it speaks to them one-on-one about a subject they are very interested in"; "It establishes a market-place between its readers and advertisers"; etc.); and industry facts and information sources. Discussing case studies and stats of publilcations from Martha Stewart Living to the Harvard Business Review in a friendly, down-to-earth style, Kobak renders the jargon, concepts and numbers accessible. (M. Evans, $24.95 640p ISBN 087131-927-6)