New York Almanack
A daily journal of history, natural history, the arts and outdoor recreation in New York State. newyorkalmanack.com
- In January 1776, Thomas Paine ― a recent immigrant to America ― published Common Sense. His straightforward argument upended the fraud of monarchy and dismantled the idea of aristocratic privilege that had dominated the world for centuries.
- Fragmentation occurs when natural or human processes break large contiguous areas of open space into ever-smaller, isolated patches.
- This episode of the ADK Talks podcast features nationally known Theodore Roosevelt reprisor Joe Wiegand to relive T.R.’s deep Adirondack ties — from youthful birding trips and great camp visits to the legendary midnight ride that began at Mount Marcy and ended with the oath of office in Buffalo.
- An outspoken critic of the Nazi Party, Jewish photojournalist Gisèle Freund fled her native Germany in 1933. Having settled in Paris, she obtained a PhD at the Sorbonne in 1936 and would become a chronicler of the multi-national bohemian community of artists and writers in Paris during the 1930s.
- In 1946, New York and the nation were in the throes of what was generally being called “reconversion” – redeploying workers and the industrial base away from the largest war in U.S. history toward a peacetime economy.
- Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of Environmental Law (NYU Press, 2026) showcases the fundamental role the law has served in reckoning with environmental harm in the United States.
- Although we may be aware that other creatures are preparing for the cold, building their nutritious stockpiles and cozy dens, few of us think about the ground beneath our feet. Yet here as well a whole world is getting ready for winter.
- Because of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930) and other tariffs, smuggling Swiss watches into the United States became lucrative. That was the case in 1930, when a Brooklyn businessman tried to bring those Swiss watches from Canada into New York City to avoid the tarrifs.
- Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History gives a systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery — using colonial travel literature, planter records and diaries, and slave narratives — to support the claim that enslaved plantation labor was just capitalist production.
- Many Wesley Bintz designed pools were built around New York State from the 1920s into the 1950s. Only a few remain still standing.
