Ragged Dick round-up

I’m lecturing this morning in Writing New York on Horatio Alger’s 1868 novel Ragged Dick, the prototypical pull-yourself-up/luck-and-pluck boy book about a boot black who makes good. It may be appropriate, then, that I woke up, post-Grammys, having had a...

Prostitution exposed! (1839)

This morning in lecture I spent some time talking about Horatio Alger’s 1868 novel Ragged Dick as belonging, in part, to the genre of the urban tourbook, offering armchair tourists an introduction to several of the city’s important civic landmarks and...