Long Island's history is filled with fascinating firsts, magnificent mansions and captivating characters. From Glenn Curtiss, the first pilot to fly a plane on the island, to Earle Ovington, who carried the country's first airmail, the area has been known as the cradle of aviation. Millionaire William K. Vanderbilt's Long Island Motor Parkway, remnants of which still remain, was the nation's first highway. The desolate ruins of an exiled Albanian king's estate lie in the midst of the woods of the Muttontown Preserve. Captain William Kidd, pirate chaser turned pirate, is rumored to have buried treasure on the island. Richard Panchyk reveals the rapidly vanishing traces of Long Island's intriguing history.
Richard Panchyk knew he wanted to be a writer by the time he was seven years old. He made his first sale, a four-page handwritten trivia booklet written on a folded piece of looseleaf paper in runny blue ink, to a third-grade classmate for a nickel. A native of Elmhurst, Queens, Richard attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School, where he took a class on the history of New York, and has been fascinated by the area's past ever since. He printed a small book of his poems at the age of nineteen and published his first book at the age of twenty-one. Since then he has published twenty-seven books, for a total of more than three thousand pages, including five titles on Long Island's history and seven titles on New York City's history. His first book for The History Press was published in 2007.