Clifford Browder's Blog, page 6

499. Do we need heroes?

BROWDERBOOKS

Bad news: The splendid new book cover with the Statue of Liberty --  one of the most exciting covers I've ever seen -- will be trashed.  The new edition of Fascinating New Yorkers is canceled, partly because of Amazon's rules about new editions, and partly because I have had a stressful relationship with BooksGoSocial, the outfit that was going to help me publish it.  Too bad, but that's how it is.

DO  WE  NEED  HEROES?

They seem to come out of nowhere well stocked with charisma, bigger than life, and almost divinely appointed to answer the needs of the people.  They used to come on a white horse, handsomely outfitted and with grandiose gestures.  Or at least they were painted like that.  There is a painting by Arayo Gomez, Simon Bolivar Crossing the Andes, that shows Bolivar in a uniform with gold epaulettes, topped by a tall hat topped by a plume.  And yes, the horse, rearing, is white.  

Bolivar, the liberator of half of South America, was likewise in fact a hero, but the painting was inspired by David's painting, Napoleon Crossing the Alps.  Napoleon was certainly a hero to many, and he was shown in a uniform, gesturing grandly, on a rearing white horse.  

Heroes in those days were enhanced by white horses, uniforms, and mountains that needed to be crossed.  And they seemed to be begotten by revolutions overthrowing an old order and establishing a new one.  Bolivar was ousting Spanish rule, and Napoleon got his chance for glory in the wake of the French Revolution.

Our George Washington was of a different breed.  He did appear mounted, though I don't know if his horse was white.  His heroic painting is the 1851 painting by Emanuele Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware.  He had no mountain handy, but the ice-jammed Delaware served very well.  He is seen standing grandly toward the front of a boat, as his men row heroically through the ice-clogged river to attack the Hessians at Trenton.  He did indeed cross the river, though surely not standing grandly, or he might have been tossed into its icy waters.  

Washington, a bona fide hero, astonished many by his lack of ambition.  Once our Revolution was over and the thirteen colonies were independent, he resigned his commission and retired to private life.  Called back into public life when elected our first president, he served two terms and again retired to private life.  This makes him almost unique among the heroes who appeared in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and the Americas, riding white horses, most of them (the horses) imaginary, not real.

A good example of the effects of charisma is Hegel's comment, when he saw Napoleon riding through Jena the day before his great victory over the Prussians in 1806.  He said he had seen the "World Soul riding out of town."  And this from a philosopher!

The risks of having a charismatic leader are obvious.  Few of them are going to retire gracefully like Washington.  They break rules and are praised for it; they are beyond routine and hostile to it, beyond good and evil.  Such were Hitler and Mussolini, to cite obvious examples.  Said Bolivar, "I am convinced deep in my bones that only a skillful despotism can rule America."  While in exile on St. Helena, Napoleon told a confidant that, had he been in America, he would willingly have been a Washington.  But all you could do with the French, he said, was give them orders.

Charismatic heroes often end badly, having shown poor judgment.  Hitler, Mussolini, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.  And when Napoleon fought his last battle at Waterloo, he had managed to alienate every great power in Europe; they were all against him.  All these heroes were superbly gifted in some ways, but in the long run, far from brilliant.

Which American presidents, besides Washington, were unusually gifted with charisma --  a charisma  felt not just by their devoted followers, but by many others as well?  I suggest the following: 

Teddy Roosevelt, remembered for our national park system, the Teddy bear (named for him), and charging up San Juan Hill.  He wanted to come back for another term in 1912, ran on a third-party ticket, split the Republican vote, and gave the election to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.  But even so, he played by the rules.Andrew Jackson, though some Americans loathed him.  Our first Western president ("Western" = west of the Appalachians), his frontier ways offended genteel Easterners but delighted Westerners.  Tough, imperious, and scrappy, he too played by the rules.Abraham Lincoln, though also in his time controversial.  He had a folksy benevolence that went over big with voters.  He too played by the rules.Franklin D. Roosevelt: a charmer, but his charm masked craftiness and a will of iron.  He broke the rules by running for a third, and then a fourth, term -- not illegal, but unprecedented.  He couldn't give up power, least of all with war looming and then declared, but he got himself re-elected.John F. Kennedy: young, dynamic, good-looking.  Tremendous appeal, but he died too soon for a good appraisal.  His early death made him available for all kinds of idealization.Benjamin Franklin:  Not a president, but a founding father with loads of charisma. During our Revolution he used it to good effect in France, gently nudging the king and his foreign minister toward war with Great Britain.  He simply oozed charm, captivated everyone -- ministers, courtiers, gracious ladies of the aristocracy.  But he had no inflated notion of his own importance, no need to flout the rules.In conclusion I would say that democracy needs heroes, whether mounted on a white horse or not, for their charisma helps bind the nation together.  And democratic nations, tending to be fractious and divided, need binding.  But heroes, having a high opinion of themselves, risk breaking the rules by grabbing and keeping power.  Our system of checks and balances counters this, and our most charismatic presidents have accepted limitations and defeat.  I can think of one exception, but I'll not mention him by name.
Source note: This post was inspired in part by "Democracy's Demagogues," a review by Ferdinand Mount of David A. Bell's "Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution," in the New York Times of Sunday, January 14, 2021.
©  2021  Clifford Browder

498 The Everleigh Sisters: Shrewd, Scandalous, Successful

BROWDERBOOKS

Another review of Forbidden Brownstones has come in.  It is by Lisa Brown-Gilbert for BestsellersWorld. It concludes: 

I thoroughly enjoyed this adult-themed read; the story flowed easily, while the narrative provided as much food for thought, as it did historical tidbits. Additionally, as a character-driven story, I found myself engrossed from the story’s outset, as the interesting characters both historical and fictional, especially that of Junius, were brought into focus. I heartily recommend this book as well as the others in the series; they are all well worth the read.

To see the full review, go here.  The book is available from Amazon and other booksellers (sometimes with delays), and from the author (i.e., me).  It is no longer sold by the original publisher, Black Rose Writing.

The fate of my next book, a new edition (coincidentally) of Fascinating New Yorkers, hangs in the balance.  Its compelling cover somehow got attached to the information for one of my published books and has to be replaced by that other book's cover.  Then, maybe, that cover -- one of the best I've ever seen -- can be joined to the information for the new edition of Fascinating New Yorkers, which can then be published.  If it sounds complicated, it is.  I'm the author, and I can barely get my mind around it.

 

THE  EVERLEIGH  SISTERS: SHREWD,     SCANDALOUS,  SUCCESSFUL      

They lived quietly in their well-furnished townhouse at 20 West 71st Street in Manhattan.  They were sisters, two years apart in their forties,  and liked to think that they looked ten years younger, which perhaps they did.  Certainly they had been handsome in their younger years.  There was nothing flashy about them; theirs was a quiet retirement that did not invite attention.  Their favorite pastime: theater.  They loved it  and attended frequently.  Its availability in New York was one reason they had chosen to live there, another attraction being its distance from Chicago.  Their life in Chicago they had left behind.

They lived contentedly in New York for decades.  The Roaring Twenties came and went, and then the Crash and the Depression, but their modest fortune was secure, and they went on seeing plays.  

Their names on the 1913 deed to their Manhattan residence were Minna and Aida Lester, for long ago, and briefly, they had been married to two brothers named Lester.  The marriages had not lasted long; Minna said that her husband was a brute who had tried to strangle her.  Their maiden name was Simms.  Sometimes they went by it, and sometimes by Lester.  But they had a third name as well, never mentioned during the years they lived in New York: Everleigh.  For Minna and Aida Simms were the Everleigh sisters, who under that assumed name had run the Everleigh Club in Chicago, the most exclusive, expensive, sumptuous, and notorious house of prostitution in the country.  Yes, these seemingly respectable women were ex-madams who had left that life behind for one of tranquil propriety.  

This, as it happened, was the dream of many a Manhattan madam: to retire to a quiet and very respectable community -- in their case, somewhere upstate, far from the fleshpots of Manhattan -- where their money would make them most welcome, and they could spend it shrewdly on worthy local causes, perhaps including a nearby college or seminary packed with well-scrubbed students as yet untried by life.  But for Minna and Aida (who also spelled it Ada), coming from the toils of Chicago, Manhattan was their refuge, and theater their pastime. 

Why am I, a committed New Yorker, concerned now with the Everleigh sisters, whose claim to fame was their dozen golden years in Chicago (1900-1912), cut short when the mayor shut them down, thus eliminating one of Second City's unique charms, surpassing anything of its kind in New York?  The explanation: I received an e-mail from a writer interested in the connection between the Everleighs and Polly Adler, a famous madam in New York in the 1920s and beyond.  Christened the Queen of Tarts, Polly ran a sumptuous house in Manhattan that was modeled on the Everleigh Club; I tell her story in chapter 14 of Fascinating New Yorkers.  How they connected is what this writer wonders about.  He thinks one possibility was the gangster Al Capone, a Brooklyn boy who transferred his endearing talents to Chicago.  Polly mentions him favorably in her 1953 memoir, A House Is Not a Home, a bestseller that let her also retire to a life of tranquility.

This query from a fellow writer prompted me to search in my cluttered apartment for my Everleigh file.  Long ago I thought of doing a biography of the sisters and researched them intensively.  I finally found the file, a thick bundle of notes and clippings that was surprisingly comprehensive.  Whatever there was to know about Aida and Minna, I had set out to learn.  There are notes on deeds of property; my correspondence with the nephew in Charlottesville, Virginia, who took Aida in, when Minna died in New York; a genealogy chart of the Simms family that I created; and the richest prize of all, discovered only after patient toil: copies of the entries for them and their girls in the 1900 census.  Thanks to the last item, I can confidently report what happened when the census taker visited 2131 South Dearborn Street in Chicago and recorded the occupants of what would soon become the most famous brothel in America.

The Everleighs were long remembered in Chicagoland.  My father, an honest toiler in law and in no way a man about town or roué, told me about them without condescension or censure.  This, of course, was the kind of story, not mentioned in the presence of women, that fathers passed on to their sons.  Today the sisters may be remembered chiefly by historians, but they were shrewd businesswomen long before they could vote, and their story is well worth telling.  More about them in next week's post.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

498. The Everleigh Sisters: Shrewd, Scandalous, Successful

BROWDERBOOKS

Another review of Forbidden Brownstones has come in.  It is by Lisa Brown-Gilbert for BestsellersWorld. It concludes: 

I thoroughly enjoyed this adult-themed read; the story flowed easily, while the narrative provided as much food for thought, as it did historical tidbits. Additionally, as a character-driven story, I found myself engrossed from the story’s outset, as the interesting characters both historical and fictional, especially that of Junius, were brought into focus. I heartily recommend this book as well as the others in the series; they are all well worth the read.

To see the full review, go here.  The book is available from Amazon and other booksellers (sometimes with delays), and from the author (i.e., me).  It is no longer sold by the original publisher, Black Rose Writing.

The fate of my next book, a new edition (coincidentally) of Fascinating New Yorkers, hangs in the balance.  Its compelling cover somehow got attached to the information for one of my published books and has to be replaced by that other book's cover.  Then, maybe, that cover -- one of the best I've ever seen -- can be joined to the information for the new edition of Fascinating New Yorkers, which can then be published.  If it sounds complicated, it is.  I'm the author, and I can barely get my mind around it.

 

THE  EVERLEIGH  SISTERS: SHREWD,     SCANDALOUS,  SUCCESSFUL      

They lived quietly in their well-furnished townhouse at 20 West 71st Street in Manhattan.  They were sisters, two years apart in their forties,  and liked to think that they looked ten years younger, which perhaps they did.  Certainly they had been handsome in their younger years.  There was nothing flashy about them; theirs was a quiet retirement that did not invite attention.  Their favorite pastime: theater.  They loved it  and attended frequently.  Its availability in New York was one reason they had chosen to live there, another attraction being its distance from Chicago.  Their life in Chicago they had left behind.

They lived contentedly in New York for decades.  The Roaring Twenties came and went, and then the Crash and the Depression, but their modest fortune was secure, and they went on seeing plays.  

Their names on the 1913 deed to their Manhattan residence were Minna and Aida Lester, for long ago, and briefly, they had been married to two brothers named Lester.  The marriages had not lasted long; Minna said that her husband was a brute who had tried to strangle her.  Their maiden name was Simms.  Sometimes they went by it, and sometimes by Lester.  But they had a third name as well, never mentioned during the years they lived in New York: Everleigh.  For Minna and Aida Simms were the Everleigh sisters, who under that assumed name had run the Everleigh Club in Chicago, the most exclusive, expensive, sumptuous, and notorious house of prostitution in the country.  Yes, these seemingly respectable women were ex-madams who had left that life behind for one of tranquil propriety.  

This, as it happened, was the dream of many a Manhattan madam: to retire to a quiet and very respectable community -- in their case, somewhere upstate, far from the fleshpots of Manhattan -- where their money would make them most welcome, and they could spend it shrewdly on worthy local causes, perhaps including a nearby college or seminary packed with well-scrubbed students as yet untried by life.  But for Minna and Aida (who also spelled it Ada), coming from the toils of Chicago, Manhattan was their refuge, and theater their pastime. 

Why am I, a committed New Yorker, concerned now with the Everleigh sisters, whose claim to fame was their dozen golden years in Chicago (1900-1912), cut short when the mayor shut them down, thus eliminating one of Second City's unique charms, surpassing anything of its kind in New York?  The explanation: I received an e-mail from a writer interested in the connection between the Everleighs and Polly Adler, a famous madam in New York in the 1920s and beyond.  Christened the Queen of Tarts, Polly ran a sumptuous house in Manhattan that was modeled on the Everleigh Club; I tell her story in chapter 14 of Fascinating New Yorkers.  How they connected is what this writer wonders about.  He thinks one possibility was the gangster Al Capone, a Brooklyn boy who transferred his endearing talents to Chicago.  Polly mentions him favorably in her 1953 memoir, A House Is Not a Home, a bestseller that let her also retire to a life of tranquility.

This query from a fellow writer prompted me to search in my cluttered apartment for my Everleigh file.  Long ago I thought of doing a biography of the sisters and researched them intensively.  I finally found the ice, a thick bundle of notes and clippings that was surprisingly comprehensive.  Whatever there was to know about Aida and Minna, I had set out to learn.  There are notes on deeds of property; my correspondence with the nephew in Charlottesville, Virginia, who took Aida in, when Minna died in New York; a genealogy chart of the Simms family that I created; and the richest prize of all, discovered only after patient toil: copies of the entries for them and their girls in the 1900 census.  Thanks to the last item, I can confidently report what happened when the census taker visited 2131 South Dearborn Street in Chicago and recorded the occupants of what would soon become the most famous brothel in America.

The Everleighs were long remembered in Chicagoland.  My father, an honest toiler in law and in no way a man about town or roué, told me about them without condescension or censure.  This, of course, was the kind of story, not mentioned in the presence of women, that fathers passed on to their sons.  Today the sisters may be remembered chiefly by historians, but they were shrewd businesswomen long before they could vote, and their story is well worth telling.  More about them in next week's post.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

497. Psychiatry: Mother hugs, seizures, lethargy, or an ice pick through the eye.

 

BROWDERBOOKS

Many thanks to those of you who watched my interview with BooksIntoZoom.  If anyone missed it, go here and scroll down: 

https://www.facebook.com/ZoomIntoBooks

But don't wait.  It won't be there much longer.

The book release for the new edition of Fascinating New Yorkers, scheduled for today, is delayed by technical problems.  It will be announced soon.

                        PSYCHIATRY

It wants to help.  Over the years it has tried to help.  Sometimes it has wanted to be rigorously scientific, like the natural sciences, and sometimes it has abandoned this approach, stopped squinting through a microscope, and began talking at length to patients.  But its catalog of ailments, as chronicled in successive issues of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), went from 106 in 1952, to 182 in 1968, 285 in 1980, and 307 in 1994.  One may well ask, as some therapists did, if there were really so many ways to be ill.  Were all these categories driven by rigorous scientific inquiry, or did they reflect an arbitrary and subjective approach by the profession?  Which makes a lay observer suspect that psychiatry, far from being rigorous and scientific, is something of a mess.

And an evolving mess, to be sure.  It has gone through phases.  Consider those phases from the nineteenth century on:

Mental illness derives from organic pathology, a belief reinforced by the discovery that general paralysis was caused by syphilis (late 19th century).Mental illness derives from the patient's thoughts, feelings, and perceptions (early 20th century, reinforced by Freud's work).Euthanasia is, or is not, permissible (a 1924 US law permitting it was cited by Germany's Nazi government in 1933 to justify a similar law of its own).Shock treatments, especially for schizophrenia: treatment with malaria, then with insulin, to produce comas; drug-induced epileptic seizures; electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to produce convulsions; prefrontal lobotomy of the brain, first done with ice picks through the patient's eye sockets (1920s and 1930s).A Freudian psychoanalytical approach: emphasis on patient's childhood and unconscious conflicts, and "remothering"of the patient to cure "maternal deprivation" (1940s).Motherhood is to blame for mental illness: "smother love" makes a son homosexual, coldness causes autism, permissiveness leads to delinquency (1950s).Tranquilizers are given to reduce "psychic energy" and get patients out of long-stay hospitals, which some critics likened to concentration camps (1960s).Researchers posing as patients get themselves admitted to psychiatric institutions, are diagnosed with schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis, and then, upon release, report abuses and assert that psychiatry can't tell the sane from the insane (1973).Antidepressants are mass-marketed to the public, despite side effects and the risk of dangerous overdoses; depression is a chemical imbalance correctable by drugs (1970s, 80s, 90s).Yet another new approach: patients given their own apartment, and/or access to a supportive community, improve noticeably, even to the point of needing little or no attention from psychiatrists (today).
So what does all this mean?  Depending on when and where it occurred, mental illness was supposedly caused by germs, the unconscious, mental institutions, or too much mother or too little.  And by way of treatment patients risked epileptic seizures, malaria, sterilization, hugs from a therapist who encouraged gifts of feces, an ice pick through the eye, or even euthanasia.  When one researcher got himself admitted to an institution, and was obligingly diagnosed, a fellow patient said to him,"You're not crazy.  You're a journalist or a professor checking upon the hospital."  The researcher's conclusion: the mentally ill are better judges of sanity than the clinicians. 
Many in the profession are trying earnestly to help people, and some are even succeeding.   But I am thankful that, today, I can pass for "normal" -- whatever that is -- and not risk seizures, a mother hug from a therapist, drug-induced lethargy, or an ice pick through the eye.
Source note: This post was inspired by "Changing Psychiatry's Mind," Gavin Francis's review of two books on psychiatry in the New York Review of Books, January 14, 2021.
©  2021  Clifford Browder

 

496. Can New York Restaurants Survive?

 

BROWDERBOOKS

As previously announced, the new edition of my nonfiction title Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies, will be released a week from today, on February 14.  The new edition is updated in facts and has a much more colorful and appealing cover.  It will be available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble in both paperback and e-book formats.

With help from my marketing consultant, I did a one-day Facebook ad for $5.00.  The result: 13,284 people reached, 830 post engagements (people who reacted to the ads), and 74 link clicks (people who hit the link and were taken to the Amazon page where all my books are listed).  Our aim at the moment is to boost my numbers, so as to set me apart from the vast number of authors on Facebook who have about 30 followers each (like me, before now).  In t his, we have succeeded; 13,284 people have now heard of me, and 830 were interested enough to react to my ad.  Mostly young people, by the way, age 18 to 40,  and many of them in India.  All credit to my marketing consultant; I could never have done it by myself.  (Does this all sound a bit commercial and downright grubby?  I know.  Like most authors, I'd rather be at my desk or computer, writing.  But nowadays authors have to do marketing too, like it or not.)

CAN  NEW  YORK  RESTAURANTS  SURVIVE?

New York has always been renowned for its restaurants.  In the nineteenth century residents and visitors could dine cheaply, and perhaps shabbily, in a basement oyster bar, or grandly (and expensively) in any of several Delmonico's, with beautiful menus in unremitting French, and waiters who appeared just when you needed them, their footfall muffled by thick carpeting.  So it was then, and so it is today, with Delmonico's replaced by numerous upscale establishments.  Or rather, so it was until the pandemic hit.  Since then, New York restaurants have been in crisis mode.  Consider:

Indoor dining is taboo.Outdoor dining is impossible, now that winter has arrived.Rents are high.Competition is keen.Even in normal times, 60% of new restaurants fail in the first three years.According to a recent survey, 54% of the city's restaurant owners doubt if their restaurant can survive for anyther six months without government assistance.Obviously, the outlook is grim.  But never doubt the inventiveness of New Yorkers, who are famously tough, resilient, and imaginative. They are finding ways to survive.They hibernate, closing now with plans to reopen later, when conditions are more favorable.They become "ghost kitchens," with patrons ordering takeout from their website.They remain open but enclose outside dining areas with prefabricated "igloos," yurt-type tents, lean-to structures attached to their store front, prefabricated canvas pavilions, and other greenhouse-like structures.The last recourse, filling sidewalks with the strangest constructions, is made possible by relaxed city guidelines permitting them to install outdoor seating on sidewalks and streets, and by the cooperation of designers and architects now organized as NYCxDESIGN.  A communal solution for a communal problem.
But it remains a fact that New York restaurants, like restaurants and other small businesses throughout the country, desperately need assistance from the federal government.  But will they get it, and will it come in time?  The closings continue at an alarming pace.  But if you want to support local restaurants, order takeout if they offer it.  You're hungry and they are desperate.  
© 2021 Clifford Browder

495. Bitcoin: A Mania, a Fraud, and a Bubble?

BROWDERBOOKS

Great news!  The new edition of my nonfiction title Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies, will be released on February 14.  Why a new edition?  Because the original publisher, Black Rose Writing, declined to renew its contract and continue selling it.  The rights have reverted to me, and since it got good reviews, I have faith in it.  The new edition is updated in facts and has a much more colorful and appealing cover.  Even if you have the old edition, keep in mind that the new one will make a splendid gift.  It will be available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble in both paperback and e-book formats.

       BITCOIN:  A  MANIA,  A  FRAUD, 

                    AND  A  BUBBLE?

1 Bitcoin = $33,833.50.  So the Internet informs me. But what is Bitcoin?  A cryptocurrency, says the New York Times.  But what is that?  

"A decentralized digital currency," says Wikipedia, meaning that it has no bank or other administrator; those who use it are evidently on their own.  And there are at least three million users, probably many more.  It was invented in 2008 by a person or persons unknown using the name Satoshi Nakamoto.   

An invented currency?  Again, I ask why?  I'm perfectly satisfied with my US dollars, though I never have enough of them -- who does?  The dollar's reign as the preferred international currency continues, even though the controversial nutritionist Gary Null, in a departure from advocating healthy food, predicted its demise -- one of his many predictions that have failed to come to pass.  And his is only one of many such failed predictions.

There are Bitcoin billionaires, I am told, which makes me think of this as an irrational fad, a wild speculation, and a mass delusion, akin to the tulip mania in seventeenth-century Holland, and the Mississippi Bubble in eighteenth-century France, when people paid ever higher prices for stock in a company with exclusive privileges to develop the France's vast holdings in the Mississippi Valley.  In time the tulip bubble burst, and in 1720 the Mississippi Bubble did the same, the stock price plummeted, and the Scottish adventurer John Law, who had organized it all, had to flee the country.  

The mysterious Mr. Nakamoto, if he/she/it exists, may not share Law's fate, since he/she/it remains anonymous, whereas Law was a public figure, sought after even by countesses desperate for shares of stock.  But some investors in Bitcoin have a unique problem; they have a fortune in it, but they've forgotten the password to unlock the hard drive containing the key to their digital wallet.  Users have ten guesses, and if none of them provides the password, their fortune is seized and encrypted forever.  Whoever devised this crazy scheme is, in my mind, diabolical, and the users turned losers elicit from me a wisp of sympathy and the taunting pronouncement "I told you so!" or "What did you expect?" 

The whole Bitcoin mania I find crazy, deluded, lamentable, and inexplicable.  If someone can explain it to me as something other than a bubble, I'll listen, but their explanation had better be good.  In the meantime I'll hoard and caress my dollars, however limp and frayed  they may be.  Money is fiction, of course; I've done a whole post on the subject: #336, "Money: Is it even real?"  But the dollar fiction is free from encryption, time-honored, and less shaky than any other.  I'll stick with it until something better comes along, and it won't be Bitcoin.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

494. New York Won't Die

BROWDERBOOKS

Forbidden Brownstones has received its first review.

If you love historical fiction, as I do, and the opportunity to learn more about a different time period, different social mores, and the struggle for acceptance when you are different, you will absolutely adore this story. I learned so much reading this and enjoyed the plot and its characters immensely. I can highly recommend this read. -- Five-star editorial review for Readers' Favorite by Grant Leishman.

 

It is available from Amazon for $16.95 (paperback) or $5.99 (e-book).  And from Barnes & Noble for $16.95 (paperback), and from WiDo Publishing for $15.75 (paperback).

                       NEW  YORK  WON'T  DIE

Yes, it's smitten by the pandemic, frozen in lockdown.  Yes, residents have fled, some of them vowing never to return.  Yes, tourists are staying away, with disastrous results for travel agencies, hotels, and restaurants.   Yes, small businesses are failing;  RETAIL  SPACE  AVAILABLE  signs have proliferated, and my barbershop and Philip Marie, one of my favorite restaurants, are gone.  Yes, the city and state -- like all cities and states -- are in dire need of federal aid, without which they will have to reduce essential services.  All in all, a grim situation, worse than any I that I have personally experienced, and my experience goes back decades.  But New York won't die.  It's tough, resourceful, resilient, and has survived a lot of crises in the past.  Consider: 

Cholera, 1832

Businesses shut down, the middle class fled, the slums suffered, and coffin-laden carts rumbled through the streets.  Steamboats refused to dock in the city, dumped New York-bound travelers in the wilds of Westchester county.  Cholera was a mystery and a terror, with no known cause or cure. But at the summer's end mortality declined, the city reopened, steamboats returned, business recovered.  Cholera hit again at intervals, but never so disastrously.

The Civil War, 1861

"Grass will grow in the streets of New York!"  So warned the leaders and merchants of the South, convinced that, once the Southern states seceded, the loss of their business would cripple the city's economy.  Yes, the city lost their business, but the government needed supplies --food, tents, rifles, ammunition -- and the city's economy boomed, merchants profited, Wall Street flourished.  Like it or not, war is good for business.

Influenza, 1918-1919

Like cholera before it, flu hit the city hard, starting in August 1918, and there was no known cure.  The sick and their homes were quarantined, but there was no general lockdown.  Schools stayed open, but at the end of the day pupils were told to go straight home and not mingle with crowds.  Schoolchildren were safer in school than on the streets or in crowded tenements, the health commissioner insisted.  Theaters and stores stayed open, but with strict regulations regarding ventilation and other sanitary conditions, and with hours staggered and reduced.  Masks were not obligatory, but coughing or sneezing without covering your face was made a misdemeanor.  By November the epidemic was beginning to decline, restrictions were removed, and the city celebrated the end of World War I on the eleventh, when the mayor led a parade down Fifth Avenue that was showered with confetti.  The health commissioner insisted that New York had done better than other big East Coast cities, and he may well have been right.

Near Bankruptcy, 1975

In the mid-1970s the city faced a crisis of a different kind.  It was debt-laden, dirty, crime-ridden, with middle-class residents fleeing to the suburbs.  Like mayors before him, Mayor Abrham Beame had indulged in financial gimmickry that simply postponed for a while the inevitable reckoning.  In April a crisis had been avoided, when the state gave financial aid to the city, but on condition that the city hand over its financial management to the state -- a loss of independence that would plague the city for years.  Then on October 19, 1975, another crisis loomed: at 4 p.m. that day the city risked falling into default; in short, it would be bankrupt.         

        New York City bankrupt!  Hundreds of banks financially tied to the city would fail, said some, though others thought the city should be allowed to fail and experience the penalty for its misdeeds.  "You New Yorkers..." intoned a friend of mine in Washington, indignant that New Yorkers expected others to bail them out.  He was convinced that New York would, and should, be permanently reduced to minor status as a city.  

        "New York City is not going to go bankrupt!"  So an employee at my bank assured his friends, as he told me years later.  "Buy the city's bonds at these prices," he urged.  "They're the bargain of a lifetime."  With risk of default, the bonds were selling at an all-time low.  Investors were desperate to get out of them.  

        So who was right -- my Washington friend or the bank employee?The bank employee, of course.  At the very last minute the teachers' union, hitherto hostile to helping the city out, agreed to save the city from default by investing its pension funds.  But President Gerald Ford's refusal to help the city was imprinted forever in the minds of New Yorkers by the headline of the New York Daily News of October 30, 1975: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.  It may have helped cost him the presidency, when he lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Ford himself thought so.
        New York has survived a lot of crises -- I won't add 9/11 to the list -- and it will survive this one, too.  But be patient, observe distancing, and wear your mask.  Don't become a statistic.  Stay safe and enjoy the "normal" times to come.  But who wants New York normal?  We want it to become again its wild, crazy, supremely creative, and totally abnormal self.
©  2021  Clifford Browder

493. Bad Boys

BROWDERBOOKS

My new historical novel Forbidden Brownstones is about the struggle of a young black man to realize his dream of living in a brownstone and even possessing it -- a fantasy that becomes an obsession facing many obstacles in racially prejudiced nineteenth-century New York.

 

It is now available from Amazon for $16.95 (paperback) or $5.99 (e-book).  And from Barnes & Noble for $16.95 (paperback), and from WiDo Publishing for $15.75 (paperback).

                             Bad  Boys

They're arrogant, insolent, aggressive, and mean by nature.  Gifted too, perhaps.  Primarily a male tendency; in my own life I've only encountered males, though I'm sure females of the species exist.

In my college class there was one, wiry.   He was cocky, good-looking, muscular, aggressive, and disliked by most of his classmates.  Yet the girl he went with, and perhaps married, was one of the nicest, most likable girls on campus.  Which brings us to another point: bad boys make out.

Recently I rewrote an article about the writer Norman Mailer that had been deleted from my nonfiction title Fascinating New Yorkers.  I described Mailer as the literary bad boy of his age.  What qualified him for this role?  A host of things.

He was by nature aggressive, always in a fight (usually when drunk), and relished it.He stabbed his second wife twice, and when someone tried to help her as she lay on the floor bleeding, Mailer yelled, "Let the bitch die!"Angry because writer Gore Vidal had given one of his books a bad review, he assaulted Vidal verbally and physically when they met to appear on a TV show together.A foe of feminists, he dismissed women's writing as "Quaintsy Goysy, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque."Yes, clearly a literary bad boy.  But they come in many forms.  The sixteenth-century painter Caravaggio, renowned for stunning light-and-dark effects, saw fit to decamp from Italy for Malta, because in an argument he had killed a man.  Hollywood has had a surfeit of them, both onscreen and off.  The unruly behavior of actor Errol Flynn was the delight of columnists, since he provided them with endless copy, while onscreen he was dashing, bold, passionate, and galant.
Recently I've been playing CDs from my deceased partner Bob's collection, recordings of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera, especially the song "Mack the Knife."  Mack is a thief and a murderer -- the ultimate in bad boys -- yet his girlfriend adores him and he is respected and feared in the seedy underworld.  No doubt because, at least for a while, he gets away with it.
Are there bad boys in finance?  All over the place.  In several posts I chronicled the career of a young New Yorker, Martin Shkreli, a financial hotshot characterized by boyish looks, online self-promotion with hours of livestreaming, and a teasing smirk.  This boy wonder had a way of starting one company, getting into ruinous debt, then starting another company and using its investors' money to pay off the first company's debt: a sort of Ponzi scheme.  Some of his enterprises involved pharmaceuticals.  When he raised the price of a drug from $13.50 to $750, he was reviled as the most hated man in America, and relished it.  It made him that much more attractive to women, he insisted, and he was probably right.  If a girl asked him for a date, he warned her that she would have to get in line, and the line was long.  
If we don't hear much about Mr. Shkreli now, it's because in 2017 the feds indicted him, not for the drug price outrage, which was not illegal, but for misrepresenting his assets to investors.  Convicted at age 34, he was hauled off to prison, and at last report was launching a lawsuit from durance vile against someone whom he claimed had slandered him.
Are there bad boys in politics?  Of course.  I have characterized this financial whiz kid as a smaller version of a noted and controversial political figure of our time.  Need I say more?
Once, having become the pen pal of a gay inmate in North Carolina convicted of child molestation and crime against nature -- charges that I thought inappropriate and overly severe -- I hoped that, however belatedly, I might become the bad boy of my college class.  But when I mentioned this by e-mail to an older woman on the staff of the college alumni magazine, she replied, "Oh no!  We've got murderers and international drug dealers."  Which immediately and forever shot down my aspirational folly.  With competition like that, I didn't stand a chance.
©  2021 Clifford Browder

492. Books About New York

                 BOOKS  ABOUT  NEW  YORK

Print books make fantastic gifts.  They don't wither or droop, go stale or out of fashion, affect your weight or your cholesterol, or get lost in the Internet.  They just lie there, marvels of patience, waiting to be read.  And if their content annoys you, you can hurl them across the room.

The following books are available.  Nonfiction titles are listed first, then fiction, with a brief description and reviews.  The most recent books appear at the start.

                     NONFICTION

3.  New Yorkers:  A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You


                                 
Finalist in the 14th National Indie Excellence Awards, 2020, Regional Nonfiction: Northeast.
Listed among the Best Independent Books in the September 3 and 10, 2020, issues of the LibraryBub newsletter, and included in a LibraryBub press release picked up by NBC and CBS.

A quirky memoir by a longtime resident who loves his crazy but profoundly creative city, with glances at that city’s fascinating history, and weird facts to surprise visitors and residents alike.  A fun book, with a few grim moments. 
For those who love (or hate) New York, have lived there or would like to, or are just plain curious about the city and its residents, past and present.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Reviews
Tourists and those new to the city will most appreciate this light, entertaining look at the Big Apple. --  Publishers Weekly.
New York is the most exciting city in the world. It's unique and reading "New Yorkers" is the next best thing to actually living there!  --  Midwest Book Review.

This immersive exploration of the city and its denizens etches a vivid portrait of “what it is to be a New Yorker ... our past and present glories and horrors.” —  Kirkus Reviews.

Thousands of books have been written about New York City, but this one stands out. -- Blue Ink Review.


2.  Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies    




                       



Finalist in the 2019 International Book Awards, Biography.
Biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York.  Included are a prostitute’s daughter who got to know two ex-kings and a future emperor; a naughty archbishop; and a serial killer who terrorized the city.
A good read for anyone who wants to know more about the hustlers, manipulators, artists, celebrities, and crooks that have frequented The City That Never Sleeps.  You may be shocked or angered, but you won’t be bored. 
See also my post #353, "Fascinating New Yorkers: Why and How I Wrote It."
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Reviews
Readers will enjoy Clifford Browder’s lively, descriptive writing. Fans of non-fiction and more recent history will really appreciate the research that he put into these pages.  —  Editorial review for Reader Views by Paige Lovitt.
There’s something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC. — Editorial review for U.S. Review of Books by Gabriella Tutino.
I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting! — Five-star editorial review for NetGalley by Cristie Underwood. 

1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World   (Not available from the author now; sold out.  Available otherwise, as stated below.)

                                                           

Winner for regional nonfiction in the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Awards, 2016.
First place for Travel in the Reader Views Literary Awards for 2015-2016.
Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.

Memoir, history, and travel book all rolled into one.  Its stories include alcoholics, abortionists, and grave robbers; the Gay Pride parade; peyote visions; and the author’s mugging in Central Park.
If you love (or hate) New York — its people, its doings, its craziness — this is the book for you.  
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews
I thoroughly enjoyed No Place for Normal: New York by Clifford Browder and highly recommend it to all fans of entertaining short stories and lovers of New York City.  —  Editorial review for Reader Views Literary Awards by Sheri Hoyte.
To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New York. — Five-star reader review for Amazon by Michael P. Hartnett. 
If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you.  A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint. — Five-star reader review for Amazon by Bill L.  
                         cliffbrowder@verizon.net

  FICTION


4.  The Eye That Never Sleeps

                         


                                    The fourth title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  
The strange friendship of a private detective and the bank robber he has been hired to apprehend, climaxed by a violent  confrontation in the dark midnight vaults of a bank.
For readers who like well-researched historical fiction, and who love a fast-paced detective story set in turbulent nineteenth-century New York.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Reviews
A classically told detective novel that creates a web of intrigue, while giving the reader a tour of a bygone era of America through the filter of New York City. – Editorial review by Sublime Book Review.
The Eye That Never Sleeps is a great midnight mystery to enjoy and I highly recommended it to all crime and mystery-loving fans. – Four-star editorial review for Readers’ Favorite by Tiffany Ferrell.
Enter the seamier haunts of mid-nineteenth century NYC. One man is married, honorable. The other is an adept planner of felonies, and sneakily vindictive.  Follow them around for a while and you decide which one bests the other in a dangerous game. — Five-star editorial review for NetGalley by Jan Tangen.

3.  Dark Knowledge


                      


The third title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  
Determined to discover if anyone in his family was involved in the pre-Civil War slave trade, young Chris Harmony meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered.  What price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
For lovers of historical fiction who like a fast-paced mystery combined with a coming-of-age story. 
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Reviews
Clifford Browder definitely managed to recreate the vibe and feel of that era.  This is a great read! — Five-star editorial review for Readers’ Favorite by Gisela Dixon.
Thoroughly enjoyed this historical book! I recommend to read!  Facts accurate! — Five-star reader review for Goodreads by LisaMarie.
Overall this novel is worth reading and I highly recommend it. — Five-star reader review for Barnes & Noble by ladynicolai.

2.  Bill Hope: His Story



  
Add caption
  
   The second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  
Young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a street kid turned pickpocket, including his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and his escape from another prison in a coffin.  In the end he faces betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder.  
The story of a likable street kid who, armed with street smarts and hope, fights his way out of crime and squalor toward something that he thinks will be better.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 
Reviews
A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure.  A must read. — Five-star reader review for Amazon by Nicole W. Brown.
Despite the story is told in a sort of flash language it's an easy read — and very enjoyable! —  Four-star review for LibraryThing Early Reviewers by viennamax.

An easy read about a hard life.  Interesting characters, a bustling city, poverty, privilege, crime, injustice combine to create a captivating tale.  —  Five-star reader review for Goodreads by John.

1. The Pleasuring of Men
                         

The first title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. 
Tom Vaughan, a respectably raised young man, chooses to become a male prostitute, then falls in love with his most difficult client.  Through a series of encounters he matures, till an unexpected act of violence provokes a final resolution.  Gay romance, historical.
For anyone interested in the imagined gay underworld of late 1860s New York. 

For an imaginary interview with Tom and other characters, see post #320 in my blog: “Interview: A Male Prostitute and His Clients.”
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Reviews
  The novel is deftly drawn with rich descriptions, a rhythmic balance of action, dialogue, and exposition, and a nicely understated plot. —  Editorial review for Barnes & Noble by Sean Moran.
  The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters.  Highly recommended. — Five-star reader review for Goodreads by Nan Hawthorne.
  Altogether this is a tale encompassing both sophisticated wit and humour, and yet the subject matter is the grotty underbelly of society as enacted by its leading citizens.  It is absolutely delightful.  Five Bees. —  Gerry Burnie's Reviews.

Clifford BrowderAuthor of historical novels and nonfiction relating to New York City.blog: https://cbrowder.blogspot.com
website: https://www.cliffbrowderbooks.com                            

491. Twelve Things I Hate

BROWDERBOOKS

Again, lots to report.  So much, that I can barely keep the titles and developments straight.  

My first nonfiction title, No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, is available from Indies Unlimited for $14.95 for the month of January.  Go here and scroll down to the Comments.

My current nonfiction title, New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You, is on a virtual book tour all the month of January.  Hopefully, some book blogs will decide to feature it, or invite me to do a guest post.  Go here and scroll down.My other nonfiction title, Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies, will be published by me later this year with BooksGoSocial in a second edition.  I'm working on the front cover now, want to make it exceptional.My historical novel Forbidden Brownstones will be released next Tuesday, January 12.  I will announce it in a media release.

            TWELVE  THINGS  I  HATE

We all have things that we hate, loathe, and detest.  We may or may not be able to explain these loathings, but they sometimes shape our lives.  I've whittled my list down to twelve.

bubblegumwieniesBrits who say “You Americans…”baseballpop-up adschild-proof bottle capsbland cheesesbland peopleseminars in ecstatic relationshipstowels that say LOVEfoundations for the advancement of blissliverIf anyone questions why, I can explain each item.  But most, I think, are self-explanatory.  
Purged from the list are these:The Star-Spangled Banner.  Don't hate it, just have trouble singing it.jackhammers.  Doesn't everyone?computers.  They harass me, but I've ranted against them enough.navels.  When visible, yes.  Freudian analysis needed to explain this one.the academic mind.  Upstaged by baseball and liver.bullies.  Too common, too easy.
And now, to show that my mentality isn't totally negative, here are some positives: 

              TWELVE  THINGS  I  LOVE

sesame seed bagelsold books and brandy on a winter night with a howling wind outsidedancing to hot, jazzy musicslime moldsbabas au rhum, their whipped cream topped with a cherryGregorian chantswild raspberries, plump and juicy, begging to be pickeddancing silver dots of light on water: the face of Godsharks (lithe and sensual, but with a thick partition between us) tangy cheesestangy peoplesleep

Again, I can explain any item that isn't obvious.

Purged from the list:

dividends.  Who wouldn't love them?Bach and Vivaldi.  Ditto.quiet.  Upstaged by sharks and slime molds.

So how about you?  What are your hates and loves?  The weirder and more obsessed, the better.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

#cliffbrowderbooks