Taylor Swift History Collection

A literary and pictorial stroll through the charming and history-filled streets of New York's West Village reveals the history and little known tales of this fascinating and picturesque neighborhood.

Greenwich Village is a tourist's dream and a favorite weekend destination for New Yorkers. A part of Manhattan Island that holds its own amid the noise and confusion of the twenty-first century, it still retains much of the character of the old farming community that was part of the original settlement of Manhattan. The West Village, the northwest section of the neighborhood, is bounded by the Hudson River on the west and Greenwich Avenue on the east and is where it all began. Famous people such as Sinclair Lewis, Fiorello LaGuardia, William ""Bill the Butcher"" Poole, Frank Serpico, James Baldwin and Jackson Pollock, among dozens of others, called this neighborhood home. Stroll down the back streets and along the waterfront and peer behind the facades of these historic structures to discover its fascinating history, hidden secrets and little-known tales.

A look into one of America's most unique places, the famous Coney Island and Astroland theme park.

Coney Island is a unique New York City neighborhood and a place of exciting innovation, where the roller coaster and the hot dog were introduced to the world, the glow of a million bare lightbulbs at Luna Park dazzled early visitors, and rocket rides at Astroland fueled intergalactic fantasies. Coney Island served as the pressure valve for New York, drawing millions to its famous beach on sweltering weekends. Astroland Park, created at the dawn of the space age, was the vision of Dewey and Jerome Albert. They transformed the three-acre Feltman's Restaurant property, one of Coney Island's oldest attractions, into a futuristic amusement park that would anchor the amusement zone for the next half century. The park's ambitious opening in 1962 mirrored the wide-eyed optimism of the early 1960s and helped Coney Island survive the closure of the venerable Steeplechase Park.

The Lower East Side has long been one of Manhattan's most vibrant neighborhoods.

For centuries, it has been home to hundreds of enclaves of immigrants from every part of the world; as they became New Yorkers, the neighborhood in turn became infused with their cultures, foods, traditions, and personalities. In this book, Lower East Side historians Eric Ferrara and Nina Howes document the memories of 25 people who lived in this larger-than-life corner of New York. From childhood memories with family to observations of the constantly changing face of the neighborhood, discover the Lower East Side through the eyes and voices of the people who have made it what it is today.