Category Archives: New York City

Any and all documents and quotes related in any way to the cultural, social, economic, and political life of Five Boroughs of New York City.

Central Park in New York City

OK, for my erstwhile and possibly future colleagues in New York City, or anyone with students interested in plants, gardening, landscape architecture, the history of leisure time, the concept of public goods or the philosophy of the commons–or any of the numerous areas of inquiry it might stimulate, here is a reading on Central Park and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

The Algonquin Wits: George S. Kaufman Reviews a Play

“As a young theater critic and aspiring playwright, Kaufman was assigned to cover a new Broadway comedy. In his review he wrote: ‘There was laughter in the back of the theater, leading to the belief that somebody was telling jokes back there.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Algonquin Wits: Heywood Broun on Taxation

“Any reasonable system of taxation should be based on the slogan of ‘Soak the rich.’”

Heywood Broun

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Algonquin Wits: Robert E. Sherwood on Presidential Elections and Succession

“Discussing modern presidential history, Sherwood once stated: ‘All Coolidge had to do in 1924 was to keep his mean trap shut, to be elected. All Harding had to do in 1920 was repeat ‘avoid foreign entanglements.’ All Hoover had to in 1928 was to endorse Coolidge. All Roosevelt had to do in 1932 was to point to Hoover.’”

Robert E. Sherwood

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Algonquin Wits: Ring Lardner on the Costs of Raising Sons

Ring once referred to his prep-school-aged sons as his ‘four grandsons,’ explaining to a puzzled acquaintance that they cost him ‘Four grand a year.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Algonquin Wits: Dorothy Parker on Teaching Undergraduates

Mrs. Parker taught for a time at Los Angeles State College, where she found the students very ‘narrow.’ When reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, for example, the students felt the book was too dirty. ‘But then Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize,’ Mrs. Parker recalled. ‘After that they behaved as if they had given it to him.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Algonquin Wits: Ring Lardner on Calvin Coolidge

President Coolidge’s inimitable deadpan personality became a cherished target for the Round Tablers’ wit. After his first meeting with Coolidge, Lardner reported to the group that he had told the president a humorous anecdote, adding, ‘He laughed until you could hear a pin drop.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Algonquin Wits: Robert Benchley on Technology

Benchley was known for carrying on a constant war with machines and inanimate objects, always coming out the loser. Once he wrote, ‘The hundred and one little bits of wood and metal that go to make up the impedimenta of daily life…each and every one are bent on my humiliation and working together, as on one great team, to bedevil and confuse me and to get me into a neurasthenic’s home before I am sixty. I can’t fight these boys. They’ve got me licked.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Algonquin Wits: Herman Mankiewicz on the Algonquin Wits

“Watching his Round Table friends leaving the Algonquin one afternoon (while they were still young and relatively unsuccessful), Herman Mankiewicz (not yet a Hollywood producer) said to Murdock Pemberton, ‘There goes the greatest collection of unsaleable wit in America.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

Draft Riots

Now seems like a perfect time to post this reading on the draft riots in New York City in 1863 and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. These events were, among other things, an outbreak of racist violence that included the arson against the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan–a stunningly shameful attack in an epoch of shameful acts.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.