Through rare and historic images, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade offers readers a chance to reminisce, explore, and delight in eighty years of this thoroughly American celebration.

Let's have a parade is the phrase that begins a beloved American tradition, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 1924, employees of the R. H. Macy and Company store in Herald Square, many of whom were immigrants and first-generation Americans, chose to give thanks for their good fortune in a manner reminiscent of the festive parades held in their native countries. The excitement and praise from crowds lining the route that first year led Macy's to issue an immediate proclamation: the parade would become a tradition. Before the parade's first decade passed, Macy's welcomed the huge and spectacular helium character balloons that became its goodwill ambassadors. Since then, the parade has become a world-famous treasure.

Revolutionary-era Manhattan was a chaotic scene of Loyalists, British occupation troops, Patriot spies and thousands of people seeking to live ordinary lives during extraordinary times. In the 1730s, the colonial legislature of New York officially created a fire department, establishing the origins of today's FDNY. As Washington withdrew from the city and the British rushed in, firefighters were forced to choose between joining the cause for independence or helping to protect British interests. Just days later, a fire broke out on September 21, 1776. By daybreak, it had consumed five hundred buildings and was the most destructive fire in colonial North America. While the British claimed it was set by American revolutionary vandals, controversy surrounding the fire remains today. Author Bruce Twickler uncovers the history of New York firefighting as a new nation was forged.

In early twentieth-century New York, few could have imagined a train terminal as grandiose as Pennsylvania Station.

Sandhogs would battle the fiercest of nature to build tunnels linking Manhattan to New Jersey and Long Island. For decades, Penn Station was a center of elegance and pride. But the ensuing rise of the airplane and automobile began to diminish train travel. By the mid-1960s, the station was tragically destroyed. The loss inspired the birth of preservation laws in the city and the nation that would save other landmarks like Grand Central. Author Paul Kaplan recounts the trials and triumphs of New York’s Penn Station.

On a snowy winter morning in 1961, Robert Zimmerman left Minnesota for New York City with a suitcase, guitar, harmonica and a few bucks in his pocket. Wasting no time upon arrival, he performed at the Cafe Wha? in his first day in the city, under the name Bob Dylan. Over the next decade the cultural milieu of Greenwich Village would foster the emergence of one of the greatest songwriters of all time. From the coffeehouses of MacDougal Street to Andy Warhol’s Factory, Dylan honed his craft by drifting in and out of New York’s thriving arts scenes of the 1960s and early ,70s. In this revised edition, originally published in 2011, author June Skinner Sawyers captures the thrill of how a city shaped an American icon and the people and places that were the touchstones of a legendary journey.

New York City, one of the world's premier urban centers, is also home to the world's most famous and storied municipal law enforcement service: the NYPD.

Policing in New York is as old as the city itself, although much has changed since the first Dutch rattle watch patrolled streets in the 1620s. Technological improvements, advancing professional standards, and historical moments like the 1898 consolidation of New York City and the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, have each profoundly changed the way New York City police officers do their jobs. Still, as New York City Police emphasizes, certain elements of the job remain true through the decades and centuries. Being a police officer in New York City has always involved a certain amount of danger, sacrifice, and public coordination.