The iconic city of New York is a bustling, heady metropolis that, thanks to the power of media, everyone in the world knows intimately, even if they've never been. But every once in a while it changes completely. At first a few flakes will fall, then more, and more. Hardened New Yorkers rush for warmth and, while they're absent, an amazing, glistening almost deserted winter wonderland momentarily appears. It is these moments that phenomenally popular photo-blogger Vivienne Gucwa lives for. She has been documenting them for more than a decade, rushing out to capture the city in snow. Of all the photos that have made her the celebrated, award-winning success that she is, it is these that are most loved, both online and in print, so we offer them here in a sumptous volume to be enjoyed by anyone who loves New York, whether from afar, as an occasional visitor, or if you've never left the Big Apple.

Street photographers will never tire of New York as a subject. It is the perfect setting for the genre, the world's most evocative cityscape, against which candid, memorable moments play themselves out every day. Nearly a decade ago, Vivienne Gucwa began walking the streets of the city with the only camera she could afford a sub-$100 point-and-shoot and started taking pictures. Choosing a direction and going as far as her feet would take her, she noticed lines, forms and structures that had previously gone unnoticed, but which resonated, embodying a sense of home. Having limited equipment forced her to learn about light, composition and color, and her burgeoning talent won her blog millions of readers and wide recognition in the photographic community. New York Through the Lens showcases the stunning results of her ongoing quest. Filled with spectacular photographs and illuminated by Vivienne's own insightful commentary, NY Through the Lens acts as a beautiful travel guide to the city; it will be a must-read for her many fans and for any lover of street photography.

A panoramic novel set in New York City during the catastrophic blizzard of February 1978 On the night of February 6, 1978, an overwhelming nor'easter struck the city of New York. On that night, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in a penthouse apartment of the stately Apelles, a crowd gathered for a grand party. And on that night Mr. Albert Haynes Caldwell—a partner emeritus at Swank, Brady & Plescher; Harvard class of '26; father of three; widower; atheist; and fiscal conservative—hatched a plan to fake a medical emergency and toss himself into the Hudson River, where he would drown. Jack Livings's The Blizzard Party is the story of that night.

Vincent Cannato takes us back to the time when John Lindsay stunned New York with his liberal Republican agenda, WASP sensibility, and movie-star good looks. With peerless authority, Cannato explores how Lindsay Liberalism failed to save New York, and, in the opinion of many, left it worse off than it was in the mid-1960's.

"In this short, surreal twist on the classic Russian novel, a doctor travels to a distant village to save its citizens from an epidemic, but a metaphysical snowstorm gets in his way"--

Cover-to-Cover Chapter 2 Books/Natural Disasters

The Great White Storm that hit New York in 1888 was the worst blizzard in US history. Richard Rhys newly married to Victoria Thornton leaves for an appointment with Edwin Booth on a spring morning in March. His wife has taken the landau to their Manor house in the Flatlands of Brooklyn. By the afternoon New York City is crippled by the white hurricane. As Richard cloaks himself in a bison hide and walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to find his wife he is met with the mortality of his past and future incarnations appearing as a female painter, Ashley in 2011 and also as a half Lakota - half Tibetan Medicine woman, Ansa, at the time of the Dutch settlements of New Amsterdam in 1664. Using a saffron thread from Ansa's ancient Tibetan robe, Richard is met with incarnations of his wife and lover as Chief Tamanend and a modern Writer for an Arts Magazine, Chelsea. Traveling to London to unlock the secrets of the past, Ashley and Chelsea come face to face with alchemy and prominent mystical figures. Luminaries such as William Penn, Dr. Samuel Pepys, Sitting Bull, Dr. John Dee, Stanford White, Buffalo Bill Cody, Nichola Tesla, Madam Blavatsky, Mary Astor, Jacob Riis, Edwin Booth, Abraham Lincoln, Nichola Tesla, John Wilkes Booth, Jack the Ripper, Louisa May Alcott, Charlie Chaplin and Queen Elizabeth the II. Discovering 13 large sea paintings by Rhys locked away at the Tate Museum, they find that if studied in a certain sequence the paintings bring about profound transformations and enlightenment. A story of how a soul can continue to change the world life after life..

The Blizzard of 1977 was a deadly blizzard that hit the Western N.Y. state area upstate New York and Southern Ontario from January 28 to February 1, 1977. Daily peak wind gusts ranging from 46 to 69 mph were recorded by the National Weather Service Buffalo Office, with snowfall as high as 100 in recorded in areas, and the high winds blew this into drifts of 30 to 40 ft. There were 23 total storm-related deaths in western New York, with 5 more in northern New York. Certain pre-existing weather conditions exacerbated the blizzard's effects. November, December and January average temperatures were much below normal. Lake Erie froze over by December 14; an ice-covered Lake Erie usually puts an end to lake-effect snow because the wind cannot pick up moisture from the lake's surface, convert the moisture to snow and then dump it when the winds reach shore. Lake Erie was covered by a deep, powdery snow; January's unusually cold conditions limited the usual thawing and refreezing, so the snow on the frozen lake remained powdery. The drifted snow on roadways was difficult to clear because the strong wind packed the snow solidly.

Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother’s whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go. Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as “one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right.” In a study of the criminal mind that is comparable to Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, Simenon maps a no man’s land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction—and redemption, perhaps, as well—by forces beyond its control.

A fictionalized account, told in free-verse poems, of a young girl's experience living through the 1888 "Great Blizzard" in New York City.