The first decade of the 21st Century has been less than kind to New York sports fans. Yes, there was that bright shining moment in Arizona a couple of years ago when the Giants won an improbable Super Bowl championship at the expense of the New England Patriots. And, of course, Read More
He had been elected to the State Senate before most of his constituents were born, but on a campaign night on Staten Island several years ago, John J. Marchi was making the rounds dutifully at a local political function, taking nothing for granted even though he hadn’t faced a serious challenge in a quarter-century.
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After presiding over the New York Archdiocese’s bicentennial last year, Cardinal Edward Egan now becomes the first New York archbishop to retire. The prelates who preceded him all died on the job, which was the norm before the church implemented mandatory retirements. So the new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, faces an unprecedented dilemma: He will take Read More
Herbert Hoover
By William E. Leuchtenburg
Times Books, 186 pages, $22
In 10 months, the nation will celebrate, if that’s the proper word, the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Depression. A lot can happen (a lot had better happen) between now and Oct. 24, the date in 1929 when the stock market Read More
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
By Christopher Hitchens
Twelve Publishers, 307 pages, $24.99
A former priest with whom I’m friendly tells a story of the day when he realized he was no longer cut out for a Roman collar. He and his immediate superior, a monsignor, were arguing about how Read More
If you want to know why New York has become the Mets’ city, don’t look at today’s standings. Look at today’s pictures – the pictures from last night’s 5-4 Met win over the Giants at Shea Stadium.
Predictably enough, there were a lot of smiling faces around home plate last night after Read More
Now that March Madness is over—by this I mean both the NCAA college-basketball tournament and the state budget process—let’s start talking about another form of insanity that involves both collegiate sports and state institutions.
You’d have to be a dedicated watcher of the ESPN sports crawl to notice this, but over the last few years, Read More
By the time Todd Zeile dug in his foot to keep from overrunning second base, 55,695 fans at Shea Stadium were standing, screaming, shouting, laughing. Three runners had crossed the plate thanks to Mr. Zeile’s double, and the Mets were ahead 6-0 in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. Mr. Zeile’s two-strike rocket Read More
The late humorist Fred Allen wasn’t thinking of Albany when he entitled his memoirs Treadmill to Oblivion. But the phase neatly describes the experience of recent New York Governors who saw the state’s executive mansion on Eagle Street as a roadside motel and another, more glamorous residence on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue as their final destination. Read More
PHILADELPHIA—The last time Republicans gathered in this city, they nominated a New Yorker with a mustache to be their Presidential candidate. Though he would never have suspected it, Thomas E. Dewey was to be the last New Yorker to win a major-party Presidential nomination in the 20th century.
Other New Yorkers have sought the Read More
