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John Strausbaugh

Biography

John Strausbaugh

John Strausbaugh has been writing about the culture and history of New York City for a quarter of a century. CITY OF SEDITION, his singular history of New York City’s role in and during the Civil War, won the Fletcher Pratt Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 2016; THE VILLAGE, his epic history of Greenwich Village, has been widely praised and was selected as one of Kirkus Reviews' best books of the year (2013). His previous books include BLACK LIKE YOU, a history of blackface minstrelsy, and E: Reflections on the Birth of the Elvis Faith.

John Strausbaugh

Books by John Strausbaugh

Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers During World War II
by John Strausbaugh - History, Nonfiction

While World War II launched and leveled nations, spurred economic growth, and saw the rise and fall of global Fascism, New York City would eventually emerge as the new capital of the world. From the Gilded Age to VJ-Day, an array of fascinating New Yorkers rose to fame, from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes to Joe Louis, Robert Moses to Joe DiMaggio. In VICTORY CITY, John Strausbaugh provides readers with a groundbreaking new look into the greatest city on earth during the most transformative --- and costliest --- war in human history.

City of Sedition: The History of New York City During the Civil War
by John Strausbaugh - History, Nonfiction

No city was more of a help to Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort, or more of a hindrance. No city raised more men, money and material for the war, and no city raised more hell against it. It was a city of patriots, war heroes and abolitionists, but simultaneously a city of antiwar protest, draft resistance and sedition. CITY OF SEDITION follows the fortunes of such fascinating figures as Horace Greeley, Walt Whitman, Boss Tweed, Thomas Nast and Herman Melville. The book chronicles how many New Yorkers seized the opportunities the conflict presented to amass capital, create new industries and expand their markets, laying the foundation for the city's --- and the nation's --- growth.

The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village
by John Strausbaugh - History, Nonfiction

Cultural commentator John Strausbaugh's THE VILLAGE is the first complete history of Greenwich Village, the prodigiously influential and infamous New York City neighborhood. From the Dutch settlers and Washington Square patricians, to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and Prohibition-era speakeasies; from Abstract Expressionism and beatniks, to Stonewall and AIDS, the connecting narratives of THE VILLAGE tell the story of America itself.