Kevin Baker

"All made in America: the skyscraper and subway car. The telephone and telegraph. The safety elevator and safety pin. Plus the microprocessor, amusement park, MRI, supermarket. Pennsylvania rifle, and Tennessee Valley Authority. Not to mention the city of Chicago or jazz or that magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. What is it about America that makes it a nation of inventors, tinkerers, researchers, and adventurers--obsessive pursuers of the never-before-created?...

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 dreams In 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,...

Reggie Jackson, who hit 563 homers and earned the nickname "Mr. October," relates his story and the path he paved in baseball history.