Kevin Baker

The late, legendary performer and activist’s candid reflections on American race relations and social movements, based on previously unpublished conversations with the award-winning historian Harry Belafonte was more than a bestselling folk singer and Hollywood’s first Black matinée idol; he was also the secret weapon of human rights movements for seventy years—a close confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt; a trusted whisperer to JFK; and a political advisor to African heads of state. Belafonte simultaneously advised Robert F. Kennedy on how to win the Black vote, openly supported Communist leaders including Fidel Castro, and skillfully avoided being blacklisted by J. Edgar Hoover. He was also a masterful fundraiser, almost singlehandedly bankrolling the civil rights movement from his own earnings as well as donations solicited from Hollywood friends and Vegas mobsters. It was Belafonte’s idea to organize superstar artists to record the hit song, “We Are the World” in 1984 to benefit famine victims in Africa. In this candid, revelatory book, drawn from a series of conversations with historian Kevin Baker shortly before Belafonte’s death in 2023, the legendary singer of “Day-O” shares his philosophy on racial politics, African colonialism, the emergence of Israel, the shortcomings of Barack Obama, and the rise of Donald Trump. A Burning House offers a primer on celebrity activism at its best—as well as a cautionary tale about the rise of American authoritarianism.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - Sports Illustrated #1 Book of 2024 - A hugely entertaining history of baseball and New York City, bursting with larger-than-life figures and fascinating stories from the game's beginnings to the end of World War II. "You're going to beg for extra innings. Without missing a scandal or a sensation, with an eye on how assimilation transforms the picture, Kevin Baker has written a buoyant, double coming-of-age story. "--Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Baseball is "the New York game" because New York is where the diamond was first laid out, where the bunt and the curveball were invented, and where the home run was hit. It's where the game's first stars were born, and where everyone came to play or watch the game. With nuance and depth, historian Kevin Baker brings this all vividly back to life: the still-controversial, indelible moments--Did the Babe call his shot? Was Merkle out? Did they fix the 1919 World Series? Here are all the legendary players, managers, and owners, in all their vivid, complicated humanity, on and off the field. In Baker's hands the city and the game emerge from the murk of nineteenth-century American life--driven by visionaries and fixers, heroes and gangsters. He details how New York and its favorite sport came to mirror one another, expanding, bumbling through catastrophe and corruption, and rising out of these trials stronger than ever. From the first innings played in vacant lots and tavern yards in the 1820s; to the canny innovations that created the very first sports league; to the superb Hispanic and Black players who invented their own version of the game when white baseball sought to exclude them. And all amidst New York's own, incredible evolution from a raw, riotous town to a new world city. The New York Game is a riveting, rollicking, brilliant ode to America's beloved pastime and to its indomitable city of origin.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822 – 1903) is considered as the father of landscape architecture in the United States and created several renowned urban parks and park systems around the country. With a stunning black and white series of trees by Stanley Greenberg dating to the beginnings of these parks this volume offers an intimate encounter with Olmsted, his motifs and heritage. Central Park in New York, the Emerald Necklace in Boston, park systems in Chicago, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Rochester and Louisville – trees have been essential elements of all of Olmsted’s park designs. New York-based photographer Stanley Greenberg pays tribute to them with his portrait series of these beautiful and dignified giants. Three essays by renowned experts on history, sociology and landscape architecture complement the narrative and present an interdisciplinary vision on Olmsted’s achievement.

The Fall of a Great American City is the story of what is happening today in New York City and in many other cities across America. It is about how the crisis of affluence is now driving out everything we love most about cities: small shops, decent restaurants, public space, street life, affordable apartments, responsive government, beauty, idiosyncrasy, each other. This is the story of how we came to lose so much--how the places we love most were turned over to land bankers, billionaires, the worst people in the world, and criminal landlords--and how we can - and must - begin to take them back. Co-published with Harper's Magazine, where an earlier version of this essay was originally published in 2018. The landlords are killing the town. As New York City approaches the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. By unremarkable I don't just mean periodic, slump-in-the-art-world, all-the-bands-suck, cinema-is-dead boring. I mean flatlining. No longer a significant cultural entity but a blank white screen of mere existence. I mean The-World's-Largest-Gated-Community-with-a-few-cupcake-shops. For the first-time in our history, creative-young-people-will-no-longer want-to-come-here boring. Even, New-York-is-over boring. Or worse, New York is like everywhere else. Unremarkable. This is not some new phenomenon, but a cancer that's been metastasizing on the city for decades now. Even worse, it's not something that anyone wants, except the landlords, and not even all of them. What's happening to New York now--what's already happened to most of Manhattan, its core, and what is happening in every American city of means, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle, you name it--is something that almost nobody wants, but everybody gets. As such, the current urban crisis exemplifies our wider crisis: an America where we believe that we no longer have any ability to control the systems we live under.

A New York Times Editors' Choice "The Big Crowd is nothing short of a modern masterpiece." -- Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo Tom O'Kane has always looked up to his brother, Charlie, latching onto him as a surrogate father as soon as he arrived in America from County Mayo. Charlie is the American Dream personified: an immigrant who worked his way up from beat cop to mayor of New York. But what if Charlie isn't as wonderful as he seems? More than a decade after Tom arrives in New York, he is forced to confront the truth about Charlie while investigating the mysterious "suicide" of Kid Twist, Charlie's star witness against the largest crime syndicate in New York. As Tom digs deeper, the secrets he uncovers throw everything he thinks he knows about his beloved brother into question. Based on one of the biggest unsolved mob murders in history, The Big Crowd brings the 1940s to indelible life, from the beaches of Acapulco to the battlefields of World War II, from Gracie Mansion to the Brooklyn docks. "A masterwork of historical fiction." -- Parade

From the producers of America the Story of Us comes the epic tale of the rise of civilization. The 12-hour series spans the first flourishing of civilization in Mesopotamia through the discovery of America. Groundbreaking production techniques bring to life the greatest landmarks and milestones of human achievement. CGI rebuilds lost worlds; large scale reenactments replay critical battles; innovative use of interactive maps dynamically illustrates the key factors that gave rise to civilization across the globe. MANKIND: The Story of All of Us emphasizes the simultaneity of the human adventure - how ancient Egypt thrived while Stonehenge was being built; China was at its zenith while Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages. HISTORY captures the danger, action, struggle, heroism, and adrenaline of MANKIND: The Story of All of Us!

The Rev. Jonah Dove is the son of a legendary Harlem minister, and a man troubled in both mind and spirit. He feels himself unworthy and incapable of taking up the burden of running his church from the larger-than-life figure who is his father. He is haunted both by his own, shameful history of "passing" as a white man in college, and by the prospects for his people in the harsh, new, racist age he fears the world is entering. Malcolm Little -- better known as Malcom X -- is a teenage hustler from Lansing, Michigan by way of Boston, a young man on the make, trying always to be something bigger, tougher, savvier, and more confident than he really is. On his way to New York, Malcolm happens to come to the rescue of Jonah and his wife, Amanda, when they are attacked by some drunken soldiers on the train. From then on, their paths cross repeatedly as they each go about trying to find what they really want out of the roiling, wartime city, until the moment when Harlem finally erupts around them, as a people driven beyond endurance strikes out blindly at all the forces keeping it entrapped in misery and hopelessness. Stranded on the streets of a rioting city, Jonah and Malcolm meet each other once more, as they come to grips with what they are and what the future will hold for them.

They came by boat from a starving land--and by the Underground Railroad from Southern chains--seeking refuge in a crowded, filthy corner of hell at the bottom of a great metropolis. But in the terrible July of 1863, the poor and desperate of Paradise Alley would face a new catastrophe--as flames from the war that was tearing America in two reached out to set their city on fire.

A literary tour de force, a magnificent chronicle of a remarkable era and a place of dreamsIn a stunning work of imagination and memory, author Kevin Baker brings to mesmerizing life a vibrant, colorful, thrilling, and dangerous New York City in the earliest years of the twentieth century. A novel breathtaking in its scope and ambition, it is the epic saga of newcomers drawn to the promise of America--gangsters and laborers, hucksters and politicians, radicals, reformers, murderers, and sideshow oddities--whose stories of love, revenge, and tragedy interweave and shine in the artificial electric dazzle of a wondrous place called Dreamland.

The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn is an entertaining and informative walking guide to the historic people and places of Brooklyn. Ten fascinating, fact-filled walks are featured, inviting the reader to take an intimate tour through Brooklyn's important historic sites, neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and shops. From the iconic brownstones of Brooklyn Heights to the famous piers on Coney Island, this book covers all of Brooklyn's notable terrain, plus many of the not-so-well known treasures of New York's much beloved borough. Beautifully illustrated with over fifty photographs and complete with maps and easy-to-follow directions, all peppered with informative side-bars and fascinating tales of Brooklyn lore. Over two-and-a-half million New Yorkers call historic and vibrant Brooklyn home and thousands more are drawn to this borough every day. Whether you're new in town or a native New Yorker exploring Brooklyn for the day, this exceptional walking guide to the historic people and places of Brooklyn is essential reading. The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn offers you a chance to explore: Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights: Take a walk through the oldest urban section of Brooklyn with more than 600 Antebellum homes. Coney Island: Frolic in Brooklyn's playground, the great "Sodom by the Sea." Prospect Park: Stroll over intricate bridges, past the boathouse, sculptures and monuments of Brooklyn's emerald jewel. Williamsburg: Explore this ever-changing neighborhood that is Italian, Latino, Hassidic, and Hipster all at once. Park Slope: Discover one of the best loved residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the "ninteenth-century suburb on the subway." Green-Wood Cemetery: Learn about famous Brooklynites buried within this historic garden cemetery.

A baseball story for a new generation traces the heroic abilities of an elusive baseball legend named John Barr and outlines the cruel absurdity of a business peopled by millionaires with high-school mentalities and sportswriters desperate for a quote. A first novel. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.