John Strausbaugh • isbn: 9781455584185
This NOT-COOLGROVE title is included in our bookstore because it is critically informative about NYC politics during the Civil War years illuminated by a wide variety of who’s who and what influencers, progressives and reactionaries, what they were thinking and doing during that fraught period. City of Sedition satisfies greatly on that front especially for us residents of NYC. Having lived here continuously since 1969, before I read this book, I did not really understand the context of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of NY, ‘the riots’, old movies about the tribal/political turf wars between Wasps, Irish, Italian and other immigrants and free Blacks’ communities. Scenes of NYC then ( slave ownership was abolished in 1927) with Southern slave owners vacationing in NYC going shopping or to the theater with their African slaves in tow, in full view of free blacks and poor whites makes for stark imagery and bring to light the sur-reality of that world. The business communities and Wall Street were invested deeply in the institution of Slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade itself which both started growing exponentially after the invention and implementation of cotton ginneries— humming away upriver in Hudson, NY, with the tons of cotton shipped upriver as fast as possible. This book is a great reference book for that period with lots of leads to more depth.
Now this book goes LIVE for four days,
every Wednesday starting September 6th, (90 minutes each day) in an exclusive Zoom presentation of
The City of Sedition by it’s author JOHN STRAUSBAUGH in person.
Here in his own words:
Coming up in September: My “City of Sedition” Zoom course for the Gotham Center, about New York City during the Civil War. My take on a fraught period in history that resonates in surprising ways with what’s happening today. Four Wednesday evenings starting September 6. All recorded, so if you miss any you can watch at your convenience. It’s based on my book of the same name, described by a reviewer as “A RICH FEAST OF OUTRAGEOUS INCIDENTS, LARGER-THAN-LIFE CHARACTERS, AND OFTEN ASTONISHING REVELATIONS.”
What are you waiting for?
Sign up and be counted. Here’s more information and the registration button.
Hope to see you in September.
