In the era of the appeasement of the dictators, Samuel Untermyer stands out as a champion of the human rights of not just German Jewry, but of other persecuted communities in Germany such as trade unionists, Roman Catholics and Freemasons. This is the first full biography of Untermyer, a prominent Wall Street lawyer who founded the principles on which Jewish democratic politics still stands today. The first to oppose Hitler, he organised the anti-Nazi league in the early 1930s, and proposed a unique global socialist/capitalist worldview which still informs American politics today.

The Manhattan skyline is one of the great wonders of the modern world. But how and why did it form? Much has been written about the city's architecture and its general history, but little work has explored the economic forces that created the skyline. In Building the Skyline, Jason Barr chronicles the economic history of the Manhattan skyline. In the process, he debunks some widely held misconceptions about the city's history. Starting with Manhattan's natural and geological history, Barr moves on to how these formations influenced early land use and the development of neighborhoods, including the dense tenement neighborhoods of Five Points and the Lower East Side, and how these early decisions eventually impacted the location of skyscrapers built during the Skyscraper Revolution at the end of the 19th century. Barr then explores the economic history of skyscrapers and the skyline, investigating the reasons for their heights, frequencies, locations, and shapes. He discusses why skyscrapers emerged downtown and why they appeared three miles to the north in midtown-but not in between the two areas. Contrary to popular belief, this was not due to the depths of Manhattan's bedrock, nor the presence of Grand Central Station. Rather, midtown's emergence was a response to the economic and demographic forces that were taking place north of 14th Street after the Civil War. Building the Skyline also presents the first rigorous investigation of the causes of the building boom during the Roaring Twenties. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the boom was largely a rational response to the economic growth of the nation and city. The last chapter investigates the value of Manhattan Island and the relationship between skyscrapers and land prices. Finally, an Epilogue offers policy recommendations for a resilient and robust future skyline.

The second volume in the Handbook of American Business History series, this book offers concise histories of extractive, manufacturing, and service industries as well as extensive bibliographic essays pointing to the leading sources on each industry and bibliographic checklists. Supplementing other bibliographic materials in business history, this volume provides researchers with a much needed path through the vast array of material available in the library and on the Internet. Indicating which resources to check and which to bypass, the book is a guide to a sometimes overwhelming amount of information. Each of the book's chapters provides a concise industry history, beginning with the industry's rise to importance in the U.S. and continuing to the present. The bibliographic essays provide a narrative outline of the leading sources published or made available in archives, libraries, or museum collections since 1971, when Lovett's American Economic and Business History Information Sources was published. Each discussion concludes with a bibliographic checklist of the titles mentioned in the essay as well as other titles. In a rapidly expanding information society, researchers, teachers, and students may be easily overwhelmed by the exhaustive material available in print and electronically. What is useful and what can be ignored is a strategic question, and few know where to begin. This book provides a guide.