The Village - by John Strausbaugh (Paperback)

About the Book

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. Illustrated with historic black-and-white photographs, The Village features lively, well-researched profiles of many of the people who made Greenwich Village famous, including Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger, Eugene O'Neill, Marcel Duchamp, Upton Sinclair, Willa Cather, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, Anais Nin, Edward Albee, Charlie Parker, W. H. Auden, Woody Guthrie, James Baldwin, Maurice Sendak, E. E. Cummings, and Bob Dylan.

Book Synopsis

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.

Illustrated with historic black-and-white photographs, The Village features lively, well-researched profiles of many of the people who made Greenwich Village famous, including Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger, Eugene O'Neill, Marcel Duchamp, Upton Sinclair, Willa Cather, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, Anais Nin, Edward Albee, Charlie Parker, W. H. Auden, Woody Guthrie, James Baldwin, Maurice Sendak, E. E. Cummings, and Bob Dylan.

From the Back Cover

The brilliantly lively, anecdotal biography of Greenwich Village, infamous and prodigiously influential, from the 1600s to the present

Review Quotes

"[A] loving and thoroughly researched look at what [Strausbaugh] calls 'a zone of rogues and outcasts from the start.' . . . Fine social history humanized with a sort of paradise-lost wistfulness." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Strausbaugh has produced the definitive history of America's bohemian wellspring and prototypical modern neighborhood with all the verve and fun and rigor it deserves." -- Kurt Andersen, bestselling author of True Believers and Heyday

"A great, sprawling saga of genius and vice in New York City's Greenwich Village. John Strausbaugh captures Bohemia at its best and level worst, reminding us why we love this place. His account is breathtaking." -- Teresa Carpenter, bestselling author of New York Diaries

"The very best kind of cultural history: Literate, lucid, erudite, and entertaining." -- Michael Lesy, author of Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties