VOL 21-2

Sag Harbor

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Colson Whitehead. Sag Harbor. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Pp. 273. ISBN: 0385527659. $24.95. Colson Whitehead is rapidly emerging as one of the major literary voices of the new millennium. Like Philip Roth a generation earlier, Whitehead writes elegantly and eloquently about what it feels like to be an upwardly mobile outsider in pursuit of the […]

Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War

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Robert Roper. Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War. New York: Walker & Company, 2008. Pp. 432 ISBN: 0802715532. $18.00. Much has been written about Walt Whitman, the iconic American poet and native Long Islander. You might think the topic would be thoroughly exhausted by now. But authors […]

Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb

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David Kushner. Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb. New York: Walker Publishing Company, Inc., 2009. Photographs, index. Pp. 237. ISBN: 0802716199. $26.00. In American popular culture, the 1960s have come to be identified as the seedbed of civil rights for African Americans, as well as other […]

Presidential Plunge: Theodore Roosevelt, The Plunger Submarine, and the United States Navy

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Adam M. Grohman, introduction by Henry J. Hendrix II, Commander US Navy. Presidential Plunge: Theodore Roosevelt, The Plunger Submarine, and the United States Navy. Locust Valley, NY: Underwater Historical Research Society, 2009. Pp. 168. Photographs, notes, appendices, index. ISBN: 9780578031224. $15.95. Theodore Roosevelt aficionados will delight in this thorough account of the president’s descent in […]

In Search of Catoneras: Long Island’s Pocahontas

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Figure 1: The Wedding of Pocahantas with John Rolf, 1867. Lithograph by Joseph Hoover. Library of Congress. One of the more compelling dramas associated with the settlement of North America is the story of Pocahontas. Historians, artists, poets, and novelists have celebrated her rescue of John Smith and her marriage to John Rolfe.[1] Pocahontas’ conversion […]

Hotels and Inns of Long Island’s North Fork

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Geoffrey K. Fleming and Amy Kasuga Folk, 2009. Hotels and Inns of Long Island’s North Fork. Charleston, S.C.: The History Press. Photographs. Pp. 156. ISBN: 1596297255. $21.99. In their delightful book, Hotels and Inns of Long Island’s North Fork, Geoffrey K. Fleming and Amy Kasuga Folk have captured the spirit of a vacation destination that […]

Long Island Moderns: Art and Architecture on the North Shore and Beyond

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Kenneth Wayne and Erik Neil, editors. Long Island Moderns: Art and Architecture on the North Shore and Beyond. Huntington, NY: Heckscher Museum of Art (Distributed by University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH), 2009. Illustrations, bibliography. Pp. 128. ISBN: 9781879195158. $29.95. In their essay “Learning from Levittown” Robert Venturi and Denis Scott Brown use that […]

Long Island Nazis: A Local Synthesis of Transnational Politics

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At first glance, a banner of Adolf Hitler would seem out of place near a banner of George Washington and the American flag. Yet, on the night of February 20, 1939 at Madison Square Garden members of the German-American Bund saw no contradiction between a founding father of the American democracy and the fascist European […]

Church, Community, and Religious Disaster Relief in Suffolk County: Three Case Studies From The Hurricane of 1938

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On September 10, 1938, a swirling air mass began to take shape off the west coast of Africa. Eleven days later it made a mad dash up the eastern seaboard of the United States striking Long Island and greater New England. The following morning, Long Islanders awoke to a scene of utter devastation. Legions of […]