Enchanted New York, Kevin Dann
Enchanted New York, Kevin Dann
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Enchanted New York
A Journey along Broadway through Manhattan's Magical Past

Author: Kevin Dann

Narrator: Daniel Henning

Unabridged: 9 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/22/2020


Synopsis

Enchanted New York chronicles an alternate history of this magical isle. It offers a tour along Broadway, focusing on times and places that illuminate a forgotten and sometimes hidden history of New York through site-specific stories of wizards, illuminati, fortune tellers, magicians, and more.

Progressing up New York's central thoroughfare, this guidebook to magical Manhattan offers a history you won't find in your Lonely Planet or Fodor's guide, tracing the arc of American technological alchemies—from Samuel Morse and Robert Fulton to the Manhattan Project—to Mesmeric physicians, to wonder–working Madame Blavatsky, and seers Helena Roerich and Alice Bailey. Harry Houdini appears and disappears, as the world's premier stage magician's feats of prestidigitation fade away to reveal a much more mysterious—and meaningful—marquee of magic.

Unlike old-world cities, New York has no ancient monuments to mark its magical adolescence. There is no local memory embedded in the landscape of celebrated witches, warlocks, gods, or goddesses—no myths of magical metamorphoses. As we follow Kevin Dann in geographical and chronological progression up Broadway from Battery Park to Inwood, each chapter provides a surprising picture of a city whose ever-changing fortunes have always been founded on magical activity.

About Kevin Dann

Kevin Dann is the author of Expect Great Things: The Life and Search of Henry David Thoreau and a dozen other books of exploration. He received his PhD from Rutgers University in American and environmental history, and has taught at Rutgers University, the University of Vermont, and the State University of New York. He leads magical bike and walking tours in Manhattan and Brooklyn.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joseph

New York, the City that Never Sleeps, one of the great metropolises (or is it metropoleis?) of the world, has, unsurprisingly, received plenty of attention from writers of all kinds. There is certainly no shortage of books dedicated to its boroughs, its history, its architecture, and its protagonist......more

Goodreads review by Heather

I was really excited to read this book. I love history and I love all things strange and unusual. So in theory I should have love this book. But. I. Was. So. Bored. The book covers the history of all sorts of things magical and strange from 1789 to the present, chronicling where related events took pla......more