In this captivating memoir, novelist Anne Roiphe shows us what it was really like to grow up rich and Jewish in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. Revisiting the world of her childhood, Roiphe brings alive a cast of characters who are both difficult to love and impossible to forget. Through the eyes of this precocious, loving daughter, we witness the brutalities that lurked behind the mah-jongg tables, cocktail parties, and summer houses of her family. By turns heartbreaking, funny, and mercilessly honest, Roiphe's story exposes the fault lines of misery that exploded in domestic battles on the home front, far overshadowing the war overseas. The locus of the story is 1185 Park Avenue. It is one of the buildings on the northern end of the avenue -- just before the train tracks mark the beginning of Harlem -- that wealthy Jewish families claimed as their own in the first half of the 20th century. Amidst the maids and the governesses and the doormen and the psychiatrists live the members of the Roth family, in Apartment 8C. They include an unfaithful father who uses his wife's fortune to entertain other women and play cards at his club; a misfit son who won't eat his food because he believes his parents are trying to poison him; a disappointed mother who waits all day for her five o'clock scotch and her crossword puzzle; and an eager daughter who tries to negotiate peace at the dinner table. Bound by custom and greed, as well as love, they stay together until their world at 1185 Park has done its damage. Only the daughter escapes whole -- to become the writer we now know as Anne Roiphe. 1185 Park Avenue is both a history of an era and a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Roiphe makes it impossible for us to view the 1940s and 1950s with unabashed nostalgia or to think the same way about the people who were crushed by its lies and deceptions. Her redemption, though bittersweet, stands as a haunting triumph long after we have turned the last page of her compelling story.

The Dakota. The Apthorp. The San Remo. The names of these legendary New York apartment buildings evoke images of marble-lined lobbies, uniformed doormen, and sunlit penthouses with sweeping Central Park views. Built from the 1880s through 1930s, classic prewar apartments were designed to lure townhouse dwellers reluctant to share a roof with other families. Billed as private mansions in the sky, they promised a charmed Manhattan lifestyle of elegance and luxury. Manhattan Classic takes readers on a lavishly illustrated guided tour of eighty-five of the most coveted buildings in New York. Author Geoffrey Lynch provides capsule histories—equal parts architectural and social history— of the most celebrated examples, with anecdotes about well-known residents and essential information about notable features. This gorgeous coffee table book is an indispensible resource for apartment hunters, real estate and design professionals, and anyone fascinated by the grace and glamour of prewar style.

This collection includes groundbreaking essays, and interviews with scholars and writers which reveal that despite pressures of assimilation, personal goals, and in some cases, anti-Semitism, they have never been able to divorce their lives or literature from their heritage.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

$21.95 paperback 1-58685-113-6 August6 x 8/ in, 432 pp, Black & White Photographs, Rights: W, ArchitecturevFrancis Morrone has returned to the buildings of his original guidebook once again to detail additions and changes in name and usage, and the book has been modified to reflect post September 11th New York City. With its thoughtful detail and out-of-the-ordinary observations, this guidebook is a must-have for New Yorkers, tourists, and architectural lovers everywhere.Francis Morrone is a lecturer and tour leader for the Municipal Art Society of New York, a nonprofit civic organization founded in 1893. His writings on architecture and New York history appear in The New Criterion, the City Journal, and other publications. His other books include An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn and An Architectural Guidebook to Philadelphia. He lives in Brooklyn.James Iska, whose work has been exhibited all over the world and has appeared in the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune, is currently on the staff of the Art Institute of Chicago.