456. Mountains

BROWDERBOOKS


You think we've got it bad with the coronavirus?  How about a cholera outbreak so bad that Hudson River steamboats, refusing to dock in the city, dropped New York-bound passengers off somewhere in Westchester County, making them trudge back to the city as best they could?  Or a snowstorm that dropped so much snow on the city that the next morning, when New Yorkers went out in snowshoes, they walked over the tops of trees?  This was in March, but the last snow, now blackened, didn't melt until July.  

      All this, the cholera of 1832 and the Great White Blizzard of 1888, is told in chapter 32 of my new nonfiction title, New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You, which is now available as a paperback at Amazon.  It celebrates New Yorkers and their wild, crazy, noisy, and profoundly creative city.  A fun book, but with a few grim moments.

      New Yorkers has received its first review, a five-star editorial review for Readers' Favorite Reviews by K.C. Finn, who says: "Author Clifford Browder has crafted a loving and modern master work on the Big Apple, one which is both an entertaining read in itself and an essential piece of informative travel guide work.... I’d highly recommend New Yorkers to any reader seeking an accomplished written snapshot of such a complex and wonderful city."    For the full review, see post #455.

      More reviews are expected.  To my surprise, the book has even had a sale in England.

      My Goodreads giveaway, offering 100 ebooks of New Yorkers, ends tonight at midnight; there's still time to enter it.  So far, 427 people have signed up.

      I am now in the process of building a website; more of this anon.  For my other books, go here.

      The post that follows is the first of a series that I plan to do on natural features that I somehow relate to: Mountains, Forests, Rivers, maybe Prairies or Fields.  But first, Mountains.

MOUNTAINS: 

      THEY  ENTICE,  DELIGHT,  KILL

I’m a city boy and happily so, but I have had my experience of mountains.  Not towering snow-capped peaks like Everest, or fiery, lava-spewing craters like Pele on the island of Hawaii, which I chronicled in post #380, “When Grandma Burns Your House Down.”  (More of her later.).  And not where I grew up in Illinois, which has no mountains.  My first mountain was Old Baldy, visible in the 1940s from the campus of my college, Pomona, in the orange groves of southern California.  With a height of 10,000 feet  and sometimes snow-capped, it is the tallest peak of the San Gabriel Mountains, which are located in Los Angeles County not far from  the City of the Angeles.  It was not a threat and could be reached easily by car, since a paved road went much of the way up the slope.  I remember some friends of mine returning from Old Baldy with heaps of snow packed tight on the sides of the car, snow being a novelty in southern California.

Hardly an experience of mountains, you may assert.  True enough.  But my next mountain was Mount Canigou in the Pyrenees, 9,000 feet, and being young and adventurous, in July 1952 I climbed to the very top.  It was a good trail, but it took two hours or more and was a challenge.  Finally I reached the chalet near the top, too tired and hungry to continue.  I bunked down with other hikers in a communal shelter, slept fairly well, and when I got up in the morning, looked out the window at a fiery red dawn sky, the most magnificent that I have ever seen.  Hurrying through breakfast, I rushed out and found the sky now a splendid snowy white.  It took only fifteen minutes to reach the rocky summit, but by then the white was gone, replaced by a cloudless summer sky, beautiful, but not extraordinary.  On the summit also were hikers who identified themselves as Catalan, not Spanish.  Going back down the mountain took a mere forty-five minutes, but my leg muscles felt just a bit rubbery, well exercised.  So ended my one real mountain climb, from the bottom to the top and down again.  I will never forget the red dawn sky, followed by milky white.

Mount Canigou.  No snow when I was there.
WSX

Once I settled down in New York City, I was far from any mountains, but an hour’s bus ride took me far upstate to Harriman Park.  Hiking there, I have climbed many so-called mountains, but they are really just wooded ridges.  But one, Parker Cabin Mountain, following a slow ascent to the top, gave me the thrill of a steep descent that I wouldn’t attempt now for anything.  But following the descent came a reward: in August, blueberries to be picked by the hundreds; I returned with my backpack full.

So my experience of mountains has involved energy, marvelous views, and fun.  But mountains can be dangerous.  Almost every summer one hears of some teen-age boys who climb up to some ledge and then, looking back down, are frozen in fear.  Only then do they fully appreciate the perilous nature of their climb.  Trapped overnight on the ledge in light summer clothing, they suffer from exposure, for even in summer, mountain nights are cold.  One heartbreaking account told how rescuers, arriving by helicopter the next day, found one boy dead and his buddy dying.  “Please don’t let me die,” he pleaded, but he was gone before they could get him off the mountain.  Yes, mountains can be dangerous; one must approach them with caution and respect.

The very notion of mountains as a place for entertainment and fun is a modern one.  Until recent times mountains were viewed as places of peril, not beauty.  They were viewed from below, and with daily life more challenging by far than today, people felt no need to seek more hardship and danger by climbing them.  They were for the gods, and no place for ordinary mortals.  Mount Olympus was the home of the gods of ancient Greece, and Mount Helicon the home of the Muses.  And in Jewish and Christian tradition, when God wanted to give Moses the tablets with the Ten Commandments, he summoned him up to Mount Sinai.  So mountains can be seen as sacred and worthy of reverence, as they are in many mythologies and belief systems, including those of the native peoples of North America.

Moses coming down from Mount Sinai. Gustave Doré, 1866.

And mountains can be seen as sublime.  In ancient times the notion of the sublime — greatness that surpasses mere beauty and defies measurement or imitation — was examined by the philosopher Longinus in his 1st-century A.D. work On the Sublime.  Rediscovered in the Renaissance, his ideas influenced modern thinkers, who described the sublime as fear-inspiring and tinged with horror, an experience that they encountered when crossing the Alps.  Romantic poets and artists embraced the concept, and Wordsworth expressed it in the Prelude in a dramatic description of his crossing the Simplon Pass. 

                       The immeasurable height

Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,

The stationary blasts of waterfalls,

And in the narrow rent, at every turn,

Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,

The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,

The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,

Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside

As if a voice were in them, the sick sight

And giddy prospect of the raving stream,

The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,

Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light —

Were all the workings of one mind, the features

Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,

Characters of the Great Apocalypse,

The types and symbols of Eternity,

Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

      Far better than any abstract definition, this passage conveys the very nature of the sublime.  And Romantic artists and poets, wanting more than just beauty, embraced it.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.
Oil on canvas, circa 1817.

Few of us today tell of experiencing what Wordsworth experienced in the Alps.  We don’t fear mountains; we go to them for climbing and skiing, for adventure and fun.  Cable cars take tourists and skiers up to high elevations, where the skiers can ski gracefully — or not so gracefully — down snowy slopes, casting long shadows on the snow.  And the tourists oooh and aaah at the sights.  And the tourists take photos of one another, or selfies, against a mountainous backdrop: proof that they were actually there, albeit without much effort.  We have made mountains into our theater, our playpen.

Alpine skier

Tourists on Qigu Salt Mountain, Taiwan.
bangdoll

However we go at them, we can’t leave them alone.  Our need of thrills and adventure takes us — some of us — even further.  Recently I viewed on YouTube a fascinating Australian video on how people react to mountains.  The video shows climbers crawling up vertical cliffs, the mere sight of which almost gives me vertigo.  It shows a climber hurtling headlong, head over heels in space, his life depending on a single long strand of rope that may save his life, but cannot keep him from finally hitting a snowy surface headfirst.  Closeups show a bruised and bloody face, and bleeding fingers from clutching at the jagged face of a cliff.  And men carrying a stretcher down a mountainside with the body of a climber who didn’t survive his adventure.  All this because we never feel more alive than when we know that, at any minute, we can die.  All this because some of us yearn to be the first, the very first, to see or do something extraordinary, yearn to strike a victorious pose at the very top of mountain, as if to say, “You’re tough, but I conquered you, I won.”

John Singer Sargent,
drawing from Switzerland sketchbook, 1869.

Illusion.  The video also shows jagged barren peaks where no living thing exists, snowy summits against an orange sunset, peaks towering above a vast, fluffy skyscape of clouds.  We yearn for the sublime and find it in mountains, but the mountains are indifferent to us, don’t need us, existed long before life evolved, and will still be there when, eons from now, the last trace of life is exterminated.  

Dominicus Johannes Beugsma

Nowhere is their indifference, their contempt for us, more visible than when they explode and send fiery flows of lava down their slopes.  One thinks immediately of Vesuvius and how it destroyed the delightful seaside resort and moneyed escape-from-the-city retreat that was Pompeii.  Found buried there in volcanic ash were remains of fleeing humans trying to outrun the mountain’s fury, just as, on snowy slopes, remains have been found of sprinting humans trying to outrun an avalanche.

 Advancing lava of a Hawaiian volcano, 2003.

How to deal with such a situation is discussed in my post #380, “When Grandma Burns Your House Down.”  The grandma involved is Pele (pronounced PEH-leh), the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire, the woman who devours the earth.  She is thought to live in the volcanic crater of Mount Kilauea on the island of Hawaii.  When the volcano erupts, it causes earthquakes, releases lethal gases, and sends streams of lava down her slopes to engulf forests and homes in fire.  

Unable to cope otherwise, native Hawaiians revere Madame Pele, view with admiration and awe her fiery eruptions, honor her as the creator of their island, and try to appease her with offerings of crystals, money, incense, and food.  But she can also appear in human form, so if you see her hitchhiking, offer her a ride.  And since she loves the stuff, offer her some gin.  When the volcano erupts, threatening once again to send down lava to destroy their homes, they say, “Ah, Pele is coming down to play,” and prepare to run for their lives.  Because, like her descendants, she likes a little mischief.

Mount Everest in the Himalayas, the king of all mountains, 2006.
Closed to climbers now on its side by Nepal because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Luca Galuzzi

So we have two ways to deal with mountains today.  One is to go to them for amusement and thrills, or to try to conquer them, which takes courage.  The alternative: see them as your ancestor, your loving but capricious grandmother, and revere her and make nice with her, no matter what she does, which shows wisdom.  Courage or wisdom: both are commendable.  But from my snug cozy New York apartment, far from volcanoes and their fiery spew, I choose wisdom. 

Coming soon:  "Fashion Dirties, Fashion Kills."  A look at fast fashion, the world of knockoffs, with a sober warning about your cotton T-shirts and blue jeans.

©  2020  Clifford Browder

457. Fashion Dirties, Fashion Kills

BROWDERBOOKS

My Goodreads giveaway offering 100 free ebooks of New Yorkers ended last Sunday at midnight: 545 entrants, 100 winners.

New Yorkers has received its second review, delayed when the flu (not the coronavirus) felled the reviewer and her two kids. "This work," she says, "offers a tantalizing vision of an exciting city overflowing with diversity in all respects."  For the full Bestsellersworld review, go here.  It is also listed with Get Read Book Reviews here.  And this  is its Bestsellers banner: 

            Fashion Dirties, Fashion Kills

I’ve never been into fashion, having always been happy with reasonably priced clothes (I’m trying not to say “cheap”).  When the midtown optometrists from whom I’d always bought my glasses went into “fashion” and upped their prices horrendously, I forsook them at once and found unfashionable but satisfactory optometrists in the Village.  The sections of the Sunday Times that I never read are Real Estate, Sports, and Styles, the latter including coverage of fashion.  Fashion is big in New York and always has been, but for me it is an alien industry putting out outrageously overpriced items that I have no need of.

Admittedly ignorant of the subject, I think of it as involving shows where youthful overdressed models of both sexes strut down runways in odd-looking outfits, their eyes staring fixedly into space, their expression deadpan, while seated viewers on both sides of the runway eye them with obsessive interest: the young selling themselves — well, their outfits and accouterments — to the old, the buyers whose decisions make or break the best efforts of the designers.  It’s all about surface, trends, and Big Money.

James Santiago

But if I kept fashion at a distance, fashion came to me.  Some years ago a Mark Jacobs designer clothing shop suddenly appeared just across the street from my building, at West 11th and Bleecker, thus anointing my street — Bleecker — as the new “in” place for designer clothing.  More designer shops followed, rents soared, and charming little shops and restaurants moved out.  For just four sanctified blocks on Bleecker, designer shops then reigned supreme until, a year or two ago, signs saying  RETAIL  SPACE AVAILABLE  began appearing in the windows of abandoned shops.  The trend continues, but the designers have not yet given up.

Being an admitted history buff, I have always been aware of fashion in New York.  From the 1830s on, visitors were remarking on how well-dressed were the women of New York.  Not the ruddy-faced farmers’ wives hawking their wares in the open-air markets, to be sure, nor the ragpickers trekking the streets in quest of discarded bottles, clothing, bones, old iron, and lumps of coal.  The fashionably dressed women rode in carriages or strolled quietly when out on errands, under the dainty dome of a fringed parasol that protected their milk-white complexion from the sun.  These were ladies, untainted by toil, their children tended at home by servants, their lord and master off in his shop or office, while they gave their time to formal calls on other ladies, shopping in fashionable shops, or doing good works for the less fortunate.  And for their busy days they needed a house dress, a dress for formal calls, a dress for evening balls and entertainments, and who knows what else.  They consulted Godey’s Lady’s Book and the Journal des Demoiselles, bought their silks and satins in the best shops, and had their dressmaker or resident  seamstress transform those fabrics into the very latest styles.  (Readymades were for the lower orders only.). 

And fashion never stood still; it was changeable.  If, to hide her bad legs or her pregnancy, Eugénie, the Empress of the French, launched the fashion of the hoop skirt, ladies in Western countries, or wherever Western styles prevailed, adopted the caged monstrosity and learned to maneuver deftly when negotiating narrow doorways.  And in this country, of course, New York, led the way.  And if, a decade later, the Empress Eugénie abandoned the hoop skirt for the bustle, the ladies of New York did likewise, adorned their derrière, and negotiated doorways with greater ease.  

        So it went throughout the nineteenth century into the twentieth, with the latest “in” styles for women coming from France, and the latest “in” styles for men coming from England, where the Prince of Wales or Lord So-and-So might determine the latest in jackets, sporting outfits, headwear, and beards.  Fashion has always been, and still is, an international phenomenon, with a lot of copycatting.  

Ball gowns of the early 1860s.

And the changes can be huge and abrupt.  The pre-World War I flowery hats and abundant ground-length dresses gave way, in the Roaring Twenties, to skull-clinging cloche hats and Coco Chanel’s knee-length petite robe noire.  (Those French again!).  And those determining the latest fashion were less apt to be the titled elite of Europe, now largely supplanted by our home-grown elite: movie stars, entertainers, First Ladies, popular singers, and the like.

      And with the change in clothing styles came changes in mores and morals.  Instead of the waltz, the Charleston.  Instead of the men-only saloon, the speakeasy, often frequented by fashionable ladies out for a lark.  And in low-rent, Bohemian Greenwich Village, respectably raised poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her sister made themselves repeat the vilest four-letter words in the English language, until they could say them routinely and be “in.”

  When I came on the scene, I was no leader in fashion.  I wore shorts in kindergarten and first grade, then, like all boys, graduated to knickers.  And when I went on to seventh grade, I followed the mob and graduated to “longies”; knickers in seventh grade were absolutely verboten.  I was casual in high school, but avoided extremes, like wearing your pants perilously low on the hips, which the far-out crowd thought “smooth” (our word then for ”cool”).  In college I got genuine Levi Strauss blue jeans, the toughest of tough fabrics, long before they were even known in the East; but I was in southern California, where they were worn by all the men, young and old.  When the Sixties hit, I was the last to wear bellbottoms, though once I did, I liked them.  But my friend Kevin, always far more into fashion, made the great leap: from stylish but arch-conservative Brooks Brothers suits (slight of build, he could patronize the boys’ department, thus sparing his budget) to clothes of every color, as well as rings on all his fingers.  “Clothes are fun,” he said.  But bellbottoms, belatedly, were as far as I would go.  L.L. Bean was more my style: reliable and reasonably priced, yes, but stylish— no way.

In all this time I had never thought much about the fashion industry itself; its products just mysteriously appeared on the runways and either did or didn’t take hold.  But now, in the New York Review of Books of February17, 2020, comes “Waste Not, Shop Not,” a review by Cintra Wilson of Dana Thomas’s  Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion — and the Future of Clothes.  And I learned a lot.  

  Thomas is of the option that, in this age of information manipulation, the fashion industry’s ads diabolically use social psychology, murky motivational levers, and Madison Avenue dirty tricks to incite your consumer libido to buy.  She cites a glossy Gucci ad showing a model walking down a runway into a clutch of older women who reek of old money and wear Gucci loafers, and are agog at the sight of the model.  The model wears a heavy gold fringe of glass beads hanging down to her chest, and her eyes are a mere smear of shadow. Topping her head is a  gold triangle made of either wheat or actual hair, it’s hard to tell which.  She wears a leopard-fur coat with fox trim, carries a red Gucci handbag, and like her stunned viewers, Gucci loafers.  This ad, says Thomas, suggests that the new chic is beyond not only your budget, but also your comprehension.  Except for the super rich, luxury fashion is mysterious and unattainable. 

A Gucci Shoe.  Stiletto heels are sexy, but
otherwise just a bit clunky. (Personal opinion.)
UggBoy, UggGirl

Or is it?  Today, for the budget-minded, getting the look of high fashion is in fact quite easy.  Readymade knockoffs of fashion unattainables can be found in stores within a few blocks of the originals.  And the queen of this industry is Zara, the world's largest fast-fashion brand.  (A new name for me; at least I had heard of Gucci.)

A Zara store in Sydney, Australia.
Mw12310

      It is this fast-fashion industry, with knockoffs usually going for less than $100, that Thomas focuses on in Fashionopolis.  The points she makes are numerous and damning.

• On average, most garments by Zara are worn seven times and then discarded.
• Vast amounts of unsold mass-produced garments are buried, shredded, burned, or carted off to landfills.
• The fashion industry consumes 25% of all the chemicals produced on earth, and is responsible for almost 20% of worldwide water pollution.
• The fashion industry has always been responsible for shocking human rights abuses, ranging from dangerous working conditions to enslavement of refugees, children, and undocumented immigrants in sweatshops.
• Over  700 gallons of water are needed to grow the cotton for one mass-produced T-shirt.
• The production of blue jeans, the most popular garment ever made, involves industrial dyes that end up as toxic runoff and wastewater that pollute the environment.  
• The North American Trade Agreement signed by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico cost the U.S. a million jobs and destroyed domestic textile and apparel industries, as manufacturers moved overseas to third-world countries where they could pay low wages and confine their workers — often girls as young as thirteen — behind locked doors.

vs.

  Fortunately, there are producers trying to counter fast fashion and globalization by making goods of inherent value with minimal environmental impact. Of course there’s a catch: their goods cost more.  Only those with a hunk of assets already can afford to play this game; the rest of the industry, prodded by profit-hungry corporate boards, are into low-coast, high-speed mass production.  And among their customers are fashion editors and journalists; since they have to look trendy and fashionable, they go for the knockoffs, too.

Chic, but is it worth 700 gallons of water?
G-Unit

I’d like to end on an up note, but can’t.  Next time you buy a cotton T-shirt or some blue jeans, try to remember how they were made.  Alas, we’ll all feel guilty, which doesn’t help at all.  So save up and pay a little more for green, sustainable goods … if you can find them.  Because fashion dirties, fashion kills.  

Source note: This post was inspired by Cintra Wilson’s review of Dana Thomas’s Fashionopolis, mentioned earlier.  Many of the facts cited come from that that article.

Coming soon:  The Five Worst Poems in the English Language.

©   2020   Clifford Browder

455. First NYers Review

Readers’ Favorite Review of New Yorkers

Review #1: Review by K.C. Finn

Review Rating:

5 Stars - Congratulations on your 5-star review! 

Reviewed By K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite

New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You is a work of non-fiction written in the style of a memoir, and was penned by author Clifford Browder. Part travel guidebook and part nostalgic memoir, this excellent read is for anyone who has ever wished to discover more about the world-famous New York City, and for those who have been there and probably missed or even misunderstood a fair bit about the many gruff and aloof characters they will have met there. There are also fantastic anecdotal stories from the author’s own life that show the diversity, character, and flavor of the city too.

Author Clifford Browder has crafted a loving and modern master work on the Big Apple, one which is both an entertaining read in itself and an essential piece of informative travel guide work. Having been to New York several times, I found myself recognizing many places and references, but the details of the history and culture surrounding them was a new level of depth and discovery. The history of the Bowery was a particularly interesting part for me as it’s something nobody has ever covered when I’ve toured the city with professional history guides, and Browder’s candid and authentic narration takes you from place to place with safe hands and entertaining prose. The author uses his own life examples very cleverly and they do not detract but rather enhance the overall experience, and therefore I’d highly recommend New Yorkers to any reader seeking an accomplished written snapshot of such a complex and wonderful city.

488. BROWDERBOOKS

                   BROWDERBOOKS

                                     

                       Silas and me selling books at BookCon 2017.

                                   Me on the left.

#cliffbrowderbooks

All my books, nonfiction and fiction alike, relate to the wild, maddening, and infinitely creative city of New York, where I have lived for decades in Greenwich Village high above the Magnolia Bakery of “Sex and the City” fame.  

My nonfiction titles are derived from posts in my blog, “No Place for Normal: New York,” which is about anything and everything New York.  

New York as a subject is inexhaustible.  I am in love with its people, its history, and its happenings.  It’s unique, far-out, free, busy, crazy, intense.  I like to put it in an equation:

            intensity + diversity = creativity = New York

I couldn’t live anywhere else.  It’s the most exciting city in the world.

All my Metropolis series of historical novels are set in nineteenth-century New York.  

My interest in that period was first inspired by background research for my two published biographies, The Money Game in Old New York: Daniel Drew and HisTimes, and The Wickedest Woman in New York: Madame Restell, the Abortionist (both now out of print).  

My novels are thoroughly researched, using primary sources whenever possible.  There are times when that period seems more alive for me than my own.  

So here are my books, nonfiction and then fiction, the most recent ones first.

                     NONFICTION

3.  New Yorkers:  A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You

                                 

Finalist in the 14th National Indie Excellence Awards, 2020, Regional Nonfiction: Northeast.

Listed among the Best Independent Books in the September 3 and 10, 2020, issues of the LibraryBub newsletter, and included in a LibraryBub press release picked up by NBC and CBS.

A quirky memoir by a longtime resident who loves his crazy but profoundly creative city, with glances at that city’s fascinating history, and weird facts to surprise visitors and residents alike.  

A fun book, with a few grim moments.  Life and death in The City That Never Sleeps.  Readers will learn

• How New Yorkers live and die
• Whose funeral caused an all-day riot
• Why a famous old cemetery offers whiskey tastings
• How many witches there are in the city (you’d be surprised)
• Which flashy modern hotel would-be suicides should avoid at all costs, and why
• How the author had an affair with a Broadway chorus boy (if the Cardinal Archbishop of New York could it, so could he).

For those who love (or hate) New York, have lived there or would like to, or are just plain curious about the city and its residents, past and present.

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

Tourists and those new to the city will most appreciate this light, entertaining look at the Big Apple. --  Publishers Weekly.

New York is the most exciting city in the world. It's unique and reading "New Yorkers" is the next best thing to actually living there!  While especially and unreservedly recommended for community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that it is also readily available in an inexpensive digital book format. --  Midwest Book Review.

Adapted and expanded from the author’s No Place for Normal: New York blog posts, this immersive exploration of the city and its denizens etches a vivid portrait of “what it is to be a New Yorker, who we are, how we live, what we do, our past and present glories and horrors.” — Kirkus Reviews

Author Clifford Browder has crafted a loving and modern master work on the Big Apple, one which is both an entertaining read in itself and an essential piece of informative travel guide work.  I'd highly recommend New Yorkers to any reader seeking an accomplished written snapshot of such a complex and wonderful city. -- Editorial review for Readers' Favorite by K.C. Finn.

I enjoyed reading New Yorkers. Author Clifford Browder gave a fascinating insiders tour of New York. Part biography, part historical dive and part travel guide, this work offers a tantalizing vision of an exciting city overflowing with diversity in all respects. This was a worthwhile read which I do recommend. -- Editorial review for Bestsellersworld by Lisa Brown-Gilbert.

Thousands of books have been written about New York City, but this one stands out.  Browder has a keen sense for interesting stories, the research skills to flesh them out, and the writing chops to transform them into great tales. -- Blue Ink Review.

 A heartfelt memoir of a man and the city he lives, loves, survives and works in.  The narrative keeps you rapt in its pages with a winning combination of information gleaned from Mr. Browder’s unique standpoint, research, and experiences from his many years as a resident.  --  Four-star reader review for Goodreads by Mochalove.

Reminiscing that warms you! Like two good friends spending an afternoon together; guaranteed to part with a smile written upon your heart.  --  Three-star Reedsy Discovery review by Jennie Louwes.

2.  Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies    

                          

Finalist in the 2019 International Book Awards, Biography.

Biographical sketches of colorful people, some remembered and some forgotten, who lived or died in New York.  

• A prostitute’s daughter who got to know two ex-kings and a future emperor; 
• a cardinal archbishop known in certain circles as “Franny”; J.P. Morgan and his nose; 
• Andy Warhol and his sex life (if there was any); 
• Polly Adler, Queen of Tarts; 
• a serial killer who terrorized the city; 
• and many more.

A good read for anyone who wants to know more about the hustlers, manipulators, artists, celebrities, and crooks that have frequented The City That Never Sleeps.  You may be shocked or angered, but you won’t be bored. 

See also post #353, "Fascinating New Yorkers: Why and How I Wrote It."

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

Readers will enjoy Clifford Browder’s lively, descriptive writing. Fans of non-fiction and more recent history will really appreciate the research that he put into these pages. His writing will definitely captivate your interest as it did mine. Fascinating New Yorkers is a pleasure to read and I look forward to reading more works by this author. —  Editorial review for Reader Views by Paige Lovitt.

Each biography essentially chronicles the rise and fall of its subject matter and divulges a juicy secret or two. There’s something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC. — Editorial review for U.S. Review of Books by Gabriella Tutino.

I felt like I was gossiping with a friend when reading this, as the author wrote about New Yorkers who are unique in one way or another. I am hoping for another book featuring more New Yorkers, as I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting!  — Five-star editorial review for NetGalley by Cristie Underwood. 

Unputdownable. — Reader review by Dipali Sen, retired librarian.

1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World 

                           

                               

Winner for regional nonfiction in the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Awards, 2016.

First place for Travel in the Reader Views Literary Awards for 2015-2016.

Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.

No Place for Normal: New York is a combination of memoir, history, and travel book all rolled into one.  

Its stories include 

• alcoholics, abortionists, grave robbers, 
• the Gay Pride parade,
• peyote visions, 
• the author’s mugging in Central Park, 
• an artist who makes art of a blood-filled squirt gun and a blackened human toe.

If you love (or hate) New York — its people, its doings, its craziness — this is the book for you.

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed No Place for Normal: New York by Clifford Browder and highly recommend it to all fans of entertaining short stories and lovers of New York City.  It would also make an interesting travel guide for people who just want to learn more about the city that never sleeps! —  Editorial review for Reader Views Literary Awards by Sheri Hoyte.

To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New York…. He embraces every corner of this diverse and fathomless city. Right down to its lovely final chapter that takes the reader to the edge of the abyss, No Place for Normal gives the reader something both life-affirming and deserving of further contemplation.— Reader review by Michael P. Hartnett. 

If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint. — Reader review by Bill L.  

  FICTION

4.  The Eye That Never Sleeps

                         

                                    

The fourth title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  

Hired by the city’s bankers to track down and apprehend the thief who is plundering their banks, private detective Sheldon Minick develops a friendship with his chief suspect, Nicholas Hale.

An elegant young man-about-town, Hale is in every way the sober Methodist detective’s opposite. 

Detectiveand suspect agree to a truce and undertake each to show the other the city that he knows and values.  

Further adventures follow, including a tour of the docks, a slaughterhouse, a cancan, and a visit to a whorehouse with leap-frogging whores.

But when the truce ends, the inevitable finale comes in the dark midnight vaults of a bank.

For readers who like well-researched historical fiction, and who love a fast-paced detective story set in turbulent nineteenth-century New York.

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

A classically told detective novel that creates a web of intrigue, while giving the reader a tour of a bygone era of America through the filter of New York City. – Editorial review by Sublime Book Review.

The Eye That Never Sleeps is a great midnight mystery to enjoy and I highly recommended to all crime and mystery-loving fans. – Four-star editorial review for Readers’ Favorite by Tiffany Ferrell.

Enter the seamier haunts of mid-nineteenth century NYC. One man is married, short, honorable, a master of disguising himself as various working men, all for good and in his chosen profession and a devoted admirer of Alan Pinkerton's agency. The other is a player, fairly tall, pretty much amoral, an adept planner of felonies, and sneakily vindictive. Follow them around for a while and you decide which one bests the other in a dangerous game. — Five-star editorial review for NetGalley by Jan Tangen.

3.  Dark Knowledge

                      

The third title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  

When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, taking slaves from Africa to Cuba, he is appalled. 

Determined to learn the truth, Chris begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. 

Since those once involved dread exposure, Chris meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. 

Chris has vivid fantasies of the suffering slaves on the ships and their savage revolts. 

How could seemingly respectable people be involved in so abhorrent a trade, and how did they avoid exposure? And what price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?

For lovers of historical fiction who like a fast-paced mystery combined with a coming-of-age story. 

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

This work of fiction does a decent job at addressing and acknowledging a disgraceful period in New York history, and may even inspire readers to do some research on their own. — Editorial review for the US Review of Books by Gabiella Tutino.

I enjoyed reading Dark Knowledge and Clifford Browder definitely managed to recreate the vibe and feel of that era so that I could almost smell the salty sea air and feel myself transported to that period.  This is great read! — Five-star editorial review for Readers’ Favorite by Gisela Dixon.

Thoroughly enjoyed this historical book! I recommend to read!  Facts accurate! — Five-star reader review for Goodreads by LisaMarie.

Overall this novel is worth reading and I highly recommend it. — Five-star reader review for Barnes & Noble by ladynicolai.

2.  Bill Hope: His Story

 

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The second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  

From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket.

Bill tells about

• his scorn for snitches and bullies; 
• his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; 
• his forays into brownstones and polite society; 
• and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder.  

Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope.

The dramatic story of a likable street kid who, armed with street smarts and hope, fights his way out of crime and squalor toward something that he thinks will be better.

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Reviews

A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure.  A must read. — Five-star reader review for Amazon by Nicole W. Brown.

Despite the story is told in a sort of flash language it's an easy read — and very enjoyable! —  Four-star review for LibraryThing Early Reviewers by viennamax.

1. The Pleasuring of Men

                         

The first title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. 

Tom Vaughan, a respectably raised young man, chooses to become a male prostitute servicing the city's affluent elite, then falls in love with his most difficult client.  

The story unfolds in the clandestine and precarious gay underworld of the time, which is vividly created. 

Through a series of encounters -- some exhilarating, some painful, some mysterious -- Tom matures, until an unexpected act of violence provokes a final resolution.  

Gay romance, historical.

For anyone interested in the imagined gay underworld of late 1860s New York.  Historical gay romance, but women have read and reviewed it.  (The cover illustration doesn’t hurt.)

For an imaginary interview with Tom and other characters, see post #320 in my blog: “Interview: A Male Prostitute and His Clients.”

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

  The novel is deftly drawn with rich descriptions, a rhythmic balance of action, dialogue, and exposition, and a nicely understated plot.  The Pleasuring of Men is both engaging and provocative. —  Barnes & Noble editorial review by Sean Moran.

  The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters.  Highly recommended. — Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.

  Altogether this is a tale encompassing both sophisticated wit and humour, and yet the subject matter is the grotty underbelly of society as enacted by its leading citizens — including the Reverend Timothy Blythe, D.D. Indeed, as I followed Tom's sexual romp through the streets of New York, I couldn't get the image of that other Tom out of my mind i.e. "Tom Jones.”  It is absolutely delightful. Five Bees. —  Gerry Burnie's Reviews.