The Rat That Got Away is an inspiring story of one man’s odyssey from the streets of the Bronx to a life as a professional athlete and banker in Europe, but it is also provides a unique vantage point on the history of the Bronx and sheds new light on a neglected period in American urban history. 
Allen Jones grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx at a time―the 1950s―when that neighborhood was a place of optimism and hope for upwardly mobile Black and Latino families. Brought up in a two-parent household, with many neighborhood mentors, Jones led an almost charmed life as a budding basketball star until his teen years, when his once peaceful neighborhood was torn by job losses, white flight, and a crippling drug epidemic. Drawn into the heroin trade, first as a user, then as a dealer, Jones spent four months on Rikers Island, where he experienced a crisis of conscience and a determination to turn his life around. Sent to a New England prep school upon his release, Jones used his basketball skills and street smarts to forge a life outside the Bronx, first as a college athlete in the South, then as a professional basketball player, radio personality, and banker in Europe.
A brilliant storyteller with a gift for dialogue, Jones brings Bronx streets and housing projects to life as places of possibility as well as tragedy, where racism and economic hardship never completely suppressed the resilient spirit of its residents. A book that will change the way people view the South Bronx.

The Rat That Got Away: A Bronx Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

JONES, ALLEN

Community & Culture

Empire State Editions

The Rat That Got Away is an inspiring story of one man’s odyssey from the streets of the Bronx to a life as a professional athlete and banker in Europe, but it is also provides a unique vantage point on the history of the Bronx and sheds new light on a neglected period in American urban history. Allen Jones grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx at a time―the 1950s―when that neighborhood was a place of optimism and hope for upwardly mobile Black and Latino families. Brought up in a two-parent household, with many neighborhood mentors, Jones led an almost charmed life as a budding basketball star until his teen years, when his once peaceful neighborhood was torn by job losses, white flight, and a crippling drug epidemic. Drawn into the heroin trade, first as a user, then as a dealer, Jones spent four months on Rikers Island, where he experienced a crisis of conscience and a determination to turn his life around. Sent to a New England prep school upon his release, Jones used his basketball skills and street smartsto forge a life outside the Bronx, first as a college athlete in the South, then as a professional basketball player, radio personality, and banker in Europe.A brilliant storyteller with a gift for dialogue, Jones brings Bronx streets and housing projects to life as places of possibility as well as tragedy, where racism and economic hardship never completely suppressed the resilient spirit of its residents. A book that will change the way people view the South Bronx.

Where in Manhattan did Washington sleep? Where was Teddy Roosevelt born? Where did James Monroe die? Where is the birthplace of the “Twist”? Where was Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff's multi-million dollar penthouse? Where is the site of the country’s first traffic fatality? These tidbits are among the more than 2,000 fascinating entries comprising All Around the Town: Amazing Manhattan Facts and Curiosities, the definitive guide to historic New York.
All Around the Town brings the city’s history to life, street by street, building by building, in all its diversity. The entries, organized in an easy-to-use format by street address, were culled from a number of sources―histories, biographies, newspapers, guidebooks, and maps. They range from amusing anecdotes to familiar and not-so-familiar historical events, from the Dutch New Amsterdam period to the present day. It is a truly unique guidebook for its historical viewpoint, and will delight those looking for a glimpse of New York City beyond Madison Avenue and Broadway. 
The second edition is revised and updated for a new millennium, reflecting a constantly changing city, and is supplemented with additional anecdotes, and over a hundred new pictures and illustrations. It is even easier to use, with cross-street information, a more portable trim size, and 300 new and updated places of interest.

All Around the Town: Amazing Manhattan Facts and Curiosities, Second Edition (Empire State Editions)

Bunyan, Patrick

Reference

Victorian-era divas who were better paid than some corporate chairmen, the boy soprano who grew up to give Bing Crosby a run for his money, music directors who were literally killed by the job―the plot of a Broadway show or a dime-store novel? No, the unique and colorful history of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Since its inception more than 125 years ago, the Cathedral Choir has been considered the gold standard of liturgical music―an example of artistic excellence that has garnered worldwide renown. Yet behind this stately facade lies an intriguing mix of New York history, star secrets, and high-level office politics that has made the choir not only a source of prime musical entertainment but also fodder for tabloids and periodicals across the nation. In this unique and engaging book, readers are treated to a treasure trove of vibrant characters, from opera stars from around the world to the thousands of volunteer singers who brought their own hopes and dreams―and widely varying musical abilities―to the fabled choir. As the city’s preeminent Catholic institution, St. Patrick’s Cathedral has served one of the most dynamic and diverse communities in the world for well over a century. It has been intimately entwined with the history of New York: a major center of culture in the nation’s cultural capital. The Cathedral Choir provides an extraordinary and largely overlooked insight into this history, and in Salvatore Basile’s pitch-perfect exploration it becomes a microcosm for the larger trends, upheavals, and events that have made up the history of the city, the nation, and even the world. Basile also illuminates the choir’s important role in New Yorkers’ responses to some of the most momentous events of the past one hundred years, from world wars to world’s fairs, from the sinking of the Titanic to 9/11, as well as its central role in the rituals and celebrations that have made life in the city more joyful―and bearable―for millions of people over the decades. While the phrase “church choir” usually evokes the image of a dowdy group of amateurs, the phrase “Choir of St. Patrick’s Cathedral” has always meant something quite different. Salvatore Basile’s splendid history shows just how different, and just how spectacular, the music of St. Patrick’s is.

Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick's Cathedral

Arts & Photography

Basile, Salvatore

Music

Victorian-era divas who were better paid than some corporate chairmen, the boy soprano who grew up to give Bing Crosby a run for his money, music directors who were literally killed by the job―the plot of a Broadway show or a dime-store novel? No, the unique and colorful history of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Since its inception more than 125 years ago, the Cathedral Choir has been considered the gold standard of liturgical music―an example of artistic excellence that has garnered worldwide renown. Yet behind this stately facade lies an intriguing mix of New York history, star secrets, and high-level office politics that has made the choir not only a source of prime musical entertainment but also fodder for tabloids and periodicals across the nation. In this unique and engaging book, readers are treated to a treasure trove of vibrant characters, from opera stars from around the world to the thousands of volunteer singers who brought their own hopes and dreams―and widely varying musical abilities―to the fabled choir.
As the city’s preeminent Catholic institution, St. Patrick’s Cathedral has served one of the most dynamic and diverse communities in the world for well over a century. It has been intimately entwined with the history of New York: a major center of culture in the nation’s cultural capital. The Cathedral Choir provides an extraordinary and largely overlooked insight into this history, and in Salvatore Basile’s pitch-perfect exploration it becomes a microcosm for the larger trends, upheavals, and events that have made up the history of the city, the nation, and even the world. 
Basile also illuminates the choir’s important role in New Yorkers’ responses to some of the most momentous events of the past one hundred years, from world wars to world’s fairs, from the sinking of the Titanic to 9/11, as well as its central role in the rituals and celebrations that have made life in the city more joyful―and bearable―for millions of people over the decades.
While the phrase “church choir” usually evokes the image of a dowdy group of amateurs, the phrase “Choir of St. Patrick’s Cathedral” has always meant something quite different. Salvatore Basile’s splendid history shows just how different, and just how spectacular, the music of St. Patrick’s is.

Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick's Cathedral (Empire State Editions)

Rundown, vermin-infested buildings. Rigid, slow-to-react bureaucratic systems. Children from broken homes and declining communities. How can a teacher succeed? How does a student not only survive but also come to thrive? It can happen, and As Bad as They Say? tells the heroic stories of Janet Mayer’s students during her 33-year tenure as a Bronx high school teacher.
In 1995, Janet Mayer’s students began a pen-pal exchange with South African teenagers who, under apartheid, had been denied an education; almost uniformly, the South Africans asked, “Is the Bronx as bad as they say?” This dedicated teacher promised those students and all future ones that she would write a book to help change the stereotypical image of Bronx students and show that, in spite of overwhelming obstacles, they are outstanding young people, capable of the highest achievements.
She walks the reader through the decrepit school building, describing in graphic detail the deplorable physical conditions that students and faculty navigate daily. Then, in eight chapters we meet eight amazing young people, a small sample of the more than 14,000 students the writer has felt honored to teach.
She describes her own Bronx roots and the powerful influences that made her such a determined teacher. Finally, the veteran teacher sounds the alarm to stop the corruption and degradation of public education in the guise of what are euphemistically labeled “reforms” (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top). She also expresses optimism that public education and our democracy can still be saved, urgently calling on all to become involved and help save our schools.

As Bad as They Say?: Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx

Mayer, Janet Grossbach

Professionals & Academics

William Seraile uncovers the history of the colored orphan asylum, founded in New York City in 1836 as the nation’s first orphanage for African American children. It is a remarkable institution that is still in the forefront aiding children. Although no longer an orphanage, in its current incarnation as Harlem-Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services it maintains the principles of the women who organized it nearly 200 years ago.
The agency weathered three wars, two major financial panics, a devastating fire during the 1863 Draft Riots, several epidemics, waves of racial prejudice, and severe financial difficulties to care for orphaned, neglected, and delinquent children. Eventually financial support would come from some of New York’s finest families, including the Jays, Murrays, Roosevelts, Macys, and Astors.
While the white female managers and their male advisers were dedicated to uplifting these black children, the evangelical, mainly Quaker founding managers also exhibited the extreme paternalistic views endemic at the time, accepting the advice or support of the African American community only grudgingly. It was frank criticism in 1913 from W. E. B. Du Bois that highlighted the conflict between the orphanage and the community it served, and it wasn’t until 1939 that it hired the first black trustee.
More than 15,000 children were raised in the orphanage, and throughout its history letters and visits have revealed that hundreds if not thousands of “old boys and girls” looked back with admiration and respect at the home that nurtured them throughout their formative years.
Weaving together African American history with a unique history of New York City, this is not only a painstaking study of a previously unsung institution of black history but a unique window onto complex racial dynamics during a period when many failed to recognize equality among all citizens as a worthy purpose.

Angels of Mercy: White Women and the History of New York's Colored Orphan Asylum (Empire State Editions)

History

Seraile, William

Africa

In 1946 Edward Rohs was left by his unwed parents at the Angel Guardian Home to be raised by the Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters hoped that his parents would one day return for him. In time they married and had other children, but Ed’s parents never came back for him. And they never signed the legal papers so that he could be adopted by another family. Raised by the Church chronicles the extraordinary life of Ed Rohs, a bright, mischievous boy who was raised in five institutions of the Catholic orphanage system in postwar Brooklyn, New York, from infancy in 1946 until he was discharged as an adult in 1965. Rohs was one of thousands of children taken in by Catholic institutions during the tumultuous post-WWII years: out-of-wedlock infants, children whose fathers had been killed in the war, and children of parents in crisis. Ed gives a brief history of each institution before describing that world―the Sisters and Brothers who raised him, the food, his companions, and the Catholic community that provided social and emotional support. When Ed finally leaves the institutions after nineteen years, he has a difficult time adjusting. He slowly assimilates into “normal” life and determinedly rises above his origins, achieving an advanced degree and career success, working for years in child welfare and as volunteer strength coach for the Fordham University basketball team. He hides his upbringing out of shame and fear of others’ pity. But as he begins to reflect on his own story and to talk to the people who raised him, Ed begins to see a larger story intertwined with his own. With original research based on interviews with clergymen and nuns, archival data from the New York Archdiocese, and government records, Raised by the Church tells the social history of an era when hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomers passed through the orphanage system. Through the story of one man, this book gives us a much needed historical perspective on an American society that understood and acknowledged the community’s need for a safe haven.

Raised by the Church: Growing up in New York City's Catholic Orphanages

Edward Rohs

Judith Estrine

Historical

In New York’s Golden Age of Bridges, artist Antonio Masi teams up with writer and New York City historian Joan Marans Dim to offer a multidimensional exploration of New York City’s nine major bridges, their artistic and cultural underpinnings, and their impact worldwide.
The tale of New York City’s bridges begins in 1883, when the Brooklyn Bridge rose majestically over the East River, signaling the start of America’s “Golden Age” of bridge building. The Williamsburg followed in 1903, the Queensboro (renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge) and the Manhattan in 1909, the George Washington in 1931, the Triborough (renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) in 1936, the Bronx-Whitestone in 1939, the Throgs Neck in 1961, and the Verrazano-Narrows in 1964. Each of these classic bridges has its own story, and the book’s paintings show the majesty and artistry, while the essays fill in the fascinating details of its social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental history.
America’s great bridges, built almost entirely by immigrant engineers, architects, and laborers, have come to symbolize not only labor and ingenuity but also bravery and sacrifice. The building of each bridge took a human toll. The Brooklyn Bridge’s designer and chief engineer, John A. Roebling, himself died in the service of bridge building. But beyond those stories is another narrative―one that encompasses the dreams and ambitions of a city, and eventually a nation. 
At this moment in Asia and Europe many modern, largescale, long-span suspension bridges are being built. They are the progeny of New York City’s Golden Age bridges. This book comes along at the perfect moment to place these great public projects into their historical and artistic contexts and to inform and delight artists, engineers, historians, architects, and city planners. In addition to the historical and artistic perspectives, New York’s Golden Age of Bridges explores the inestimable connections that bridges foster, and reveals the extraordinary impact of the nine Golden Age bridges on the city, the nation, and the world.

New York's Golden Age of Bridges

Dim, Joan Marans

History & Criticism

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Books by Empire State Editions

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Empire State Editions publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Rat That Got Away: A Bronx Memoir

The Rat That Got Away: A Bronx Memoir

All Around the Town: Amazing Manhattan Facts and Curiosities, Second Edition (Empire State Editions)

Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick's Cathedral

Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick's Cathedral (Empire State Editions)

As Bad as They Say?: Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx

As Bad as They Say?: Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx

Angels of Mercy: White Women and the History of New York's Colored Orphan Asylum (Empire State Editions)

Raised by the Church: Growing up in New York City's Catholic Orphanages

New York's Golden Age of Bridges