Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America

Lafayette College history professor Miller (Masters of the Air) captures the heady excitement and enduring creativity of 1920s Manhattan. Focusing on development of Midtown Manhattan, Miller vividly reimagines the city to describe the lives of his characters—those responsible for the skyscrapers, hotels, department stores, co-ops, night clubs, theaters, and businesses that flocked to Midtown after the completion of Grand Central Station in 1913. His cast includes the famous (Charles Lindbergh, Duke Ellington); the infamous (mobster Owney Madden); the ingenious (George Washington bridge engineer Othmar Ammann); and the entrepreneurial (cosmetics empress Helen Rubenstein, NBC founder David Sarnoff). Others—longshoremen, garment workers, ironworkers—labored behind the scenes. Miller covers topics as diverse as the crime syndicates and bootleggers of the Prohibition era; changes in the housing market; the evolution of the publishing industry; the construction of chic, art deco office buildings, such as the Chrysler, that transformed Midtown into a mercantile center with distinctive boundaries; and far more. Conveying the panoramic sweep of the era with wit, illuminating details, humor, and style, Miller illustrates how Midtown Manhattan became the nation’s communications, entertainment, and commercial epicenter. 50 b&w images in a 24-page insert. Agent: Gina Maccoby, Gina Maccoby Literary Agency. (May)