Jonathan Goldman “Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York”

East End Books Boston Seaport Presents: Jonathan Goldman “Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York” in conv. W/Patrick Mullen 5/3 at 6pm

Jonathan Ezra Goldman is Professor in the Humanities Department at New York Institute of Technology. His previous books include Modernism Is the Literature of Celebrity and Joyce and the Law. He lives in New York City.

Patrick Mullen is associate professor of English at Northeastern University. He is the author of The Poor Bugger's Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History (Oxford, 2012). Queer Possessions: Creative Criticism and Modern Irish Literature (Syracuse) will be available May 1st, 2026. Equal parts critical and playful, Queer Possessions works to rediscover misplaced queer history, encourage new forms of experiencing text, and empower readers to create new interpretations and works.
Jonathan Ezra Goldman's whirlwind tour of early 1920s New York City visits an all-female police platoon, a Black amusement park shut down before it opened, an Arabic literary salon, socialist Puerto Rican cigar factories, Chinatown funerals, lesbian cafes, overcrowded jails, toxic dumps, and Ku Klux Klan recruitment offices.

Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York offers a fresh, panoramic view of New York City in the 1920s, uncovering hidden histories from entertainment, politics, arts, technology, and the law. It unearths stories of everyday life and marginalized communities. The book portrays sweeping events such as the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, and immigration reform that counter the era's popular conceptions of ballooning wealth and uproarious celebration. The grand narratives of the 1920s interweave with little-known anecdotes about well-known figures such as Marcus Garvey, Dorothy Parker, and Babe Ruth, serving as a backdrop to the everyday challenges and triumphs of a city beset by crowds, automobile traffic, and rapidly changing technology and urban infrastructure, as well as erased stories of injustices like Jim Crow practices, immigration anxieties, and the violent treatment of political dissent. These stories still resonate today, showing that this dizzying, exuberant ride through hidden history can help twenty-first century readers see our own moment more clearly.

ADVANCE PRAISE

"Jonathan Goldman's Hidden Histories is a wonder and a delight--a lyrical and surprising historical excavation of Jazz Age New York that had me riveted from page one. You will find plenty of familiar figures (Dorothy Parker, Babe Ruth) between these covers, but even more exciting are the unfamiliar ones. This book deserves a prominent place on any shelf of enduring works of New York City history." -- Jonathan Mahler, author of The Gods of New York

"Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York is that rare work of history that is both eminently scholarly--a nearly encyclopedic look at 1920s New York--and enchantingly readable. Goldman brings to vivid life figures, moments, and movements that have for too long been ignored. The book looks backward to look forward; that is, it helps us to understand how we got to where we are now. In particular, Jonathan Goldman explores the lives of figures who have, because of their race, gender, sexuality, or immigration status, been sidelined in our history books as much (or more) than they were in their own time. A fantastic work of engaged scholarship." -- Hugh Ryan, author of When Brooklyn Was Queer

Event Venue

East End Books Boston Seaport, 300 Pier 4 Boulevard, Boston, United States

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