Long Island : People and Places, Past and Present Book

The history of Long Island is as rich and fascinating as that of America itself. This popular account has been updated with a new chapter devoted to the tumultous and eventful postwar years. Beautifully written and superbly illustrated, Long Island: People and Places, Past and Present reconstructs events through the words of the people who experienced them and presents life through the eyes of those who lived it. Former Newsday reporter and editor Bernie Bookbinder covers the crucial episodes that shaped Long Island, from its glacial origins to the present day, when it has become a bellweather of trends for the rest of the nation, and from Brooklyn Heights to Montauk Point.

For those who know of Long Island largely as an exit on the Expressway, a round of golf at Bethpage State Park, or a day at Jones Beach, this book will introduce the harshness and peril of colonial settlements, the cruelty and humiliation of British occupation, the romance and danger - and stench - of whaling, the buzz of early airplanes that looked like box kites and only sometimes flew, the glamour and gangsterism of the Jazz Age, and the bigotry and terror of the Ku Klux Klan and the German-American Bund.

300 illustrations, 140 in full color, maps, 264 pages, 8-3/4 x 11-1/2"