New York Books

The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever

Frank Gifford, Peter Richmond

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1958 Frank Gifford was the golden boy on the glamour team in the most celebrated city in the NFL. When his New York Giants played the Baltimore Colts for the league championship that year, it became the single most memorable contest in the history of professional football. Broadcast to an audience of millions, it was the first title game ever to go into sudden-death overtime. Its drama, excitement, and controversy riveted the nation and helped propel football to the forefront of the American sports landscape.

Now, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of "The Greatest Game Ever Played," New York Giants Hall of Famer and longtime television analyst Frank Gifford provides an inside-the-helmet account that will take its place in the annals of sports literature. Drawing on the poignant and humorous memories of every living player from the game—including fellow Hall of Famers Sam Huff, Andy Robustelli, Art Donovan, Lenny Moore, and Raymond Berry—as well as the author's own experiences and reflections, The Glory Game captures a magnificent moment in American sports history. It is the story of two very different cities and teams, filled with the joy, the disappointment, and the eternal pride of a day that will forever symbolize all that is great about sports.

Told with gripping immediacy, The Glory Game is an indelible portrait of the NFL's most transcendent hours—a winter version of The Boys of Summer, told by one of football's true legends.

Kitchen Confidential

Anthony Bourdain

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 575 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

All Irritating Attitude 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Either the writer is an arrogant, obnoxious, irritating, attitudinal jerk, or he wants us to think that he is an arrogant, obnoxious, irritating, attitudinal jerk. Either way, I couldn't be bothered to finish this book. Sorry I bought it and thereby increased the guy's income.

A great read! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

It's amazing where writing talent is found. I originally discovered Bourdain via his "Les Halles Cookbook" -- one of the funniest cookbooks I have ever read. And then slowly, I began to remember -- hadn't this same guy written an earlier book, much more scandalous?

Well, this is that earlier book. You may not care for the tales it tells, or think very highly of the author, but the man writes like a god! Most of his best jokes are on himself, and all of the wimped-out sissy mistakes he made on the way to becoming a member of The Brotherhood, and its storyteller.

One of his bottom lines: "This stuff is EASY. My cooks are all recent immigrants from Latin America who had never tasted anything better than a taco in their lives. If they can learn, so can you."

It is also, for me, quite amazing to really sit back and think about a gang of five or six guys who actually manage to serve dinner to 600 people! Not once, but day in and day out! For this, you don't want no inspiration, you are not in the market for genius, man, you are a member of the freeping army/ballet corps, and everything depends on precise execution of tasks you have done a kazillion times before. (Oops, I slipped into quasi-Bourdain mode there.)

This book is really a lot better than Orwell's pretentious "Down and Out in Paris in London," especially when you learn that Orwell was basically a middle-class guy who volunteered to go slumming, and left when he got tired of it. This is not the case with Bourdain. This is HIS LIFE, and I for one really appreciate his gusto, his zest, and his willingness to work hard for what he wants.

Enjoy, enjoy (and don't order fish from a restaurant on Monday!)

Editorial Review:

After 25 years of sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine, chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From dishwasher to chef, from the Rainbow Room in the Rockerfeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, his tales are as unpredictable as they are funny and shocking.

Giants Among Men: How Robustelli, Huff, Gifford, and the Giants Made New York a Football Town and Changed the NFL

Jack Cavanaugh

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, when basketball’s Boston Celtics were piecing together a run for the ages, when Montreal’s Canadiens were in the midst of notching a record-setting five straight Stanley Cups, and when the New York Yankees were the once-and-future kings of the diamond, one team boosted the NFL to national prominence as none other: the New York Giants.

In Giants Among Men, Jack Cavanaugh, the acclaimed author of Tunney, transports us to the NFL’s golden age to introduce the close-knit and diverse group that won the heart of a city, helped spread the gospel of pro football across the nation, and recast the NFL as a media colossus.

Central to Cavanaugh’s narrative, and emblematic of the Giants’ bond with their followers, was a hard-nosed future Hall of Fame defensive end named Andy Robustelli. A World War II combat vet, a graduate of Arnold College, undersized and nearing age thirty, Robustelli nevertheless anchored a Giants defensive unit so ferocious that they were the first team to inspire crowds to chant “Dee-fense!” But Robustelli and the Giants were a hit on the gridiron, playing in six NFL Championship Games in eight seasons between 1956 and 1963, the most remarkable aspect of this team was perhaps its relationship to the fans. These Giants were largely composed of ordinary joes who were equally at ease hobnobbing with Gleason and Sinatra at Toots Shor’s as they were rubbing elbows with working-class rooters on the IRT en route to Sunday games in the Bronx–like many of their fans, nearly all Giants players worked second jobs off-season to make ends meet. But the Giants of this era didn’t merely affect the fans’ relationship to the game; they changed the game itself. The team launched the careers of future head-coaching geniuses Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi, as well as those of a galaxy of stars and future Hall-of-Famers including Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Emlen Tunnell, Roosevelt Brown, Y. A. Tittle, Charlie Conerly, Rosie Grier, and Pat Summerall. The Giants teams of this remarkable era were tagged with the soubriquet “Mara Tech” (for the Mara family, who had owned the franchise since its inception)–due to the number of players and coaches who later found success in the boardroom, the broadcast booth, and behind the bench.

Filled with historical and cultural insight and vivid portraits of larger-than-life characters and indispensable everymen, Giants Among Men transcends nostalgia and sports trivia to faithfully depict a watershed era for both football and the American nation.


Praise for Jack Cavanaugh’s Tunney

“Impressively researched and richly detailed . . . a long-overdue portrait of a fascinating fighter.”
–Sports Illustrated

“A winning tale . . . Jack Cavanaugh brings Tunney, Dempsey and the fight scene of the Roaring Twenties back to life.”
–Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“[A] sprawling new biography . . . The boxing scenes are spun gold.”
–The New York Times

“Filled with vivid characters from one of boxing’s most glamorous eras, this tale goes fifteen rounds and delivers plenty of punch.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“One of the primary elements to the greatness of this biography is Cavanaugh’s ability to plumb the confusing depths of celebrity in America.”
–The Denver Post

The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL

Mark Bowden

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for the NFL Championship game. Played in front of sixty-four thousand fans and millions of television viewers around the country, the game would be remembered as the greatest in football history. On the field and roaming the sidelines were seventeen future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti, and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry. An estimated forty-five million viewers—at that time the largest crowd to have ever watched a football game—tuned in to see what would become the first sudden-death contest in NFL history. It was a battle of the league's best offense—the Colts—versus its best defense—the Giants. And it was a contest between the blue-collar Baltimore team versus the glamour boys of the Giants squad. The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sport. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the championship, it is destined to be a sports classic.

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective

Al Santasiere

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

It's been eighty-five years since Yankee Stadium opened. Soon the Yankees will leave the field, fans will file out and the lights will fade. But the lights will never go out on the Stadium that has proudly worn the moniker "The House That Ruth Built."

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective recounts the story of this extraordinary American landmark. It captures the creation of a home for the New York Yankees that began in 1923 and was driven by co-owner Jacob Ruppert, who envisioned a ballpark grander than any other conceived at the time. It takes the reader from the field to the dugout, from the press box to the clubhouse, from principal owner George Steinbrenner's office to Monument Park. Every corner of the stadium is revealed.

But Yankee Stadium is more than a ballpark. The most iconic moments in history have taken place within its walls: Lou Gehrig's poignant farewell to his team and the fans who would never forget him; epic heavy-weight fights, from Louis versus Schmeling to Ali versus Norton; the 1958 National Football League championship, christened the "Greatest Game Ever Played"; exciting college football games, including the one immortalized by Knute Rockne in which he asked Notre Dame to "win one for the Gipper"; and the unrivaled record-breaking successes of the New York Yankees, from the very first home run hit at the Stadium by Babe Ruth to Alex Rodriguez' 500th.

With the unprecedented cooperation of the New York Yankees organization, photographs have been culled from every conceivable source. More than 250 photographs - many never before published - will allow you to walk in the Stadium beside Mantle and Maris, witness the only perfect game in World Series history, and see the Stadium during the stirring 2001 World Series.

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective is more than just photographs. It is also graced with firsthand accounts of what it was like to be there as history unfolded. Some of the contributors include: George Steinbrenner, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Don Shula, Sugar Ray Leonard, Frank Gifford, Regis Philbin, Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Reggie Jackson, and Cal Ripken Jr.

It has been said that the shaded outfield of Yankee Stadium houses the ghosts of long-gone Yankee greats - at least that's what the players swear they feel as the long days of summer wane into the heated race for the pennant. Or could it be the knowledge that, within those walls, they will always be measured against the titans who came before them? It is the power of the place that led Sports Illustrated to call Yankee Stadium the greatest venue of the twentieth century. And only here, within the pages of Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective, can you feel what they feel.

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

David McCullough

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Total reviews: 76 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

First published in 1972, The Great Bridge is the classic account of one of the greatest engineering feats of all time. Winning acclaim for its comprehensive look at the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, this book helped cement David McCullough's reputation as America's preeminent social historian. Now, The Great Bridge is reissued as a Simon & Schuster Classic Edition with a new introduction by the author.

This monumental book brings back for American readers the heroic vision of the America we once had. It is the enthralling story of one of the greatest events in our nation's history during the Age of Optimism -- a period when Americans were convinced in their hearts that all great things were possible. In the years around 1870, when the project was first undertaken, the concept of building a great bridge to span the East River between the great cities of Manhattan and Brooklyn required a vision and determination comparable to that which went into the building of the pyramids. Throughout the fourteen years of its construction, the odds against the successful completion of the bridge seemed staggering. Bodies were crushed and broken, lives lost, political empires fell, and surges of public emotion constantly threatened the project. But this is not merely the saga of an engineering miracle: it is a sweeping narrative of the social climate of the time and of the heroes and rascals who had a hand in either constructing or obstructing the great enterprise. Amid the flood of praise for the book when it was originally published, Newsday said succinctly "This is the definitive book on the event. Do not wait for a better try: there won't be any."

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

Ron Chernow

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Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Learn the history of American finance as a whole by studying one titanic banking empire. 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Chernow pioneered the popular study of corporate history with this sweeping history of the Morgan banking empire back in 1990. This is a superb bit of history writing on almost every level: it's intensively researched and documented; it's a great story with a real narrative arc and emotional tension; it has far reaching implications in the fields of economics and American history and synthetically knits together these two areas with insight and revelatory vision.

The story of the House of Morgan isn't just the story of JP Morgan and it isn't just the study of Morgan Guarantee or Morgan Stanley. (The House of Morgan historically has encompassed Drexel's Philadephia bank, Morgan's NY bank, Morgan Grenfell in London and Morgan Harjes in Paris.) The House of Morgan has its roots in George Peabody's London merchant bank of the 1830s hawking junk rated US State securities, then passed to Junius P. Morgan, then on to his son J.P. Morgan, and then on to his son J.P. Morgan (Jr. - known as "Jack") and then goes right through to the modern era (the book ends in the heyday of the corporate takeover binge of the 1980s). There have been a number of excellent biographies of J.P. Morgan (such as Jean Strouse's excellent "Morgan: American Financier" of 2000), but they all pick up the story of the Morgan banking empire in mid stream and then drop out when J.P. dies in 1913 - right before things get really interesting. The Morgan Bank was instrumental in arming England in WW1 and was in the very thick of the war reparations morass following the Treaty of Versailles. The Glass-Steagle act of 1933 (which forced the split between investment and commercial banks) was aimed straight at the House of Morgan - one of a series of government actions (including the creation of the Federal Reserve banking system) designed to limit the tremendous power of the House of Morgan. Glass-Steagle forced the creation of Morgan Stanley which arguable only increased the House of Morgan's reach and power. "The House of Morgan" gets it all and puts it all in its place. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Morgan banking empire - and by extension anyone who wants to understand American finance in the period century of the United State's ascent.

The heart of the story is J.P. Morgan, of course. Morgan was the consummate guardian of the "Gentleman Banker's Code" - a Victorian notion of serving the greater good through serving the client that formed the heart of the finance culture - with some Protestant spiritual overtones thrown in. Morgan's bank, with its twin loci on either side of the Atlantic, sat astride the flow of capital between England and the US. In the 19th Century English capital investment was vital for American industrial development and Morgan helped tame the destructive competitive business practices common in the railroad wars where rival rail lines would squander millions building parasitic parallel lines in an effort to drive the competition out of business. Morgan learned the lesson that cutthroat competition was wasteful of investor's capital and he ever after strove to build peaceful vast monopolies. This kind of business value system seems at odds with our current notion of free market capitalism it certainly wasn't very popular with labor or with those who feared the power of vast trusts. Vast trusts were Morgan's specialty. He personally assembled the first billion dollar stock offering in knitting together the vast majority of US steel production into US Steel. He set up a host of other vast monopolistic conglomerates including General Electric, International Telephone & Telegraph, International Harvester, International Mercantile Marine, and a host of railroad accumulations (just to mention the highlights). In defending foreign investment interests he defended the dollar's value on the International market by defending the gold standard - putting him at odds with bimetallism and William Jennings Bryan. In the East Room of his fabulous 36th St. Library there is a huge 16th century tapestry representing the sin of greed. Morgan clearly thought of himself as a force for moral order among robber baron thieves. When JP Morgan died he left less than $120 million - a figure that shocked many people who had figured he was worth far more. Morgan assembled vast economic power through board voting proxies with the goal of orchestrating a smoother running economy for the profit of his clients. While Morgan did good business on legitimate business, he didn't skim or abuse his position (granted "insider trading" wasn't considered a sin in those days - if it was done discretely). JP Morgan died in 1913 a year after the Titanic (which was built by IMM - his new shipping trust; thus stressing Morgan doubly because he had friends who died on board and the disaster stood to devastate the bottom line of a huge project/client of his) and the Pujo hearings where Morgan was grilled for his role in resolving the Panic of '07 which involved a massive hat trick of capital manipulation that featured putting Teddy Roosevelt over a barrel and forcing him to approve a critical bit of monopolistic corporate takeover business for the US Steel concern.

As juicy as all that is, things actually get even better during the reign of Jack Morgan (who ruled the House of Morgan from 1913 to 1943) when we get to see Morgan banks' involvement with the rise of fascism in Italy and Japan and driving home the spike of reparations in post WW1 Germany. It's fascinating beyond that too. We see the rise of corporate wealth and access to capital in the post WWII period with a tide of legislation, but also the critical post Bretton Wood's unmooring of the capital markets. With corporations gaining direct access to capital markets banks struggled to stay relevant with the balance of power tipping to consumer banking. Commercial and Investment banks were forced to get creative and the leveraged buyout and corporate takeover booms are seen as an adaptive response by the banking industry to the new economic reality - with the final abandoning of the Gentleman Banker's code as a consequence (and a metaphorical Jolly Rodger flag as its replacement). I really can't recommend this book more highly to anyone with any shred of interest in any of this vitally important stuff.

Editorial Review:

The House of Morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about an American banking dynasty. Hailed as an investigative masterpiece, it traces the trajectory of the J. P. Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987 and beyond. A rich, panoramic story of four generations of Morgans and the powerful, secretive firms they spawned, it is the definitive account of the rise of the modern financial world.

From the period glamor of the late nineteenth century to secret alliances during both world wars, The House of Morgan is studded with startling revelations about the men and women -- Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, Winston Churchill, Adnan Khashoggi, Paul Volcker, and many others -- who have transformed the financial and political world in the past 150 years.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Edmund Morris

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Total reviews: 161 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Classic Biography and a Work of Art 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

What a tremendous biography, or actually one third of a biography, as this is the first of a projected three volumne work. It is hard to imagine someone having a career like this today, although to be fair to our own times, Teddy Roosevelt was a dynamo by the standards of his own era as well.

The books only covers Roosevelt's life up until he becomes president, but because of Roosevelt's statue, drive and intellect, and Morris' thorough research, expert analysis and superb writing, it is also a very exciting view into America in the second half of the 19th century. A total of 700 pages and at the end I could not wait to start the next volume, Theodore Rex (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Editorial Review:

Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York

Matthew Goodman

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful, entertaining, and surprisingly true story of how in the summer of 1835 a series of articles in the Sun, the first of the city’s “penny papers,” convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited.

Six articles, purporting to reveal the lunar discoveries made by a world-famous British astronomer, described the life found on the moon—including unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and, strangest of all, four-foot-tall flying man-bats. The series quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era. And the Sun, a brash working-class upstart less than two years old, had become the most widely read newspaper in the world.

Told in richly novelistic detail, The Sun and the Moon brings the raucous world of 1830s New York City vividly to life—the noise, the excitement, the sense that almost anything was possible. The book overflows with larger-than-life characters, including Richard Adams Locke, author of the moon series (who never intended it to be a hoax at all); a fledgling showman named P.T. Barnum, who had just brought his own hoax to New York; and the young writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was convinced that the moon series was a plagiarism of his own work.

An exhilarating narrative history of a city on the cusp of greatness and a nation newly united by affordable newspapers, The Sun and the Moon may just be the strangest true story you’ve ever read.