HIDDEN HISTORIES

Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York from the Suppressed to the Strange offers a fresh look at 1920s New York City, unearthing stories of everyday life and marginalized communities. Sweeping events such as the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, and immigration reform are seen through the individual experiences of librarians, cops, shopkeepers, sexworkers, ragpickers, dogs, and antivaxxers that counter the era’s popular conceptions of ballooning wealth and uproarious celebration. Jonathan Ezra Goldman’s whirlwind tour of 1920s NYC visits an all-female police platoon, a Black amusement park shut down before it opened, an Arabic literary salon, socialist Puerto Rican cigar factories, Chinatown funerals, lesbian cafes, toxic dumps, and Ku Klux Klan recruitment offices. The grand narratives of the 1920s interweave with little-known anecdotes about well-known figures such as Marcus Garvey, Dorothy Parker, and Babe Ruth, serving as a backdrop to the everyday challenges and triumphs of a city beset by housing shortages, traffic chaos, and rapidly changing technology and urban infrastructure, as well as erased stories of injustices like white supremacist attacks, raids on gay bath houses, and mass deportations. These stories still resonate today, testifying that this dizzying, exuberant ride through hidden history can help twenty-first readers see our own moment more clearly.

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JUNE 4, 2026 at BOOK CULTURE

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Explore a playlist of songs discussed in “Hidden History of Jazz Age New York" 

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Reviews

  • Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York is well illustrated, well sourced, and easy reading … This is the sort of book one dips in and out of, usually with rewarding results.

    — The Arts Fuse

  • "A fascinating and fact-filled look at Gotham in the Roaring Twenties."

    — Kirkus Reviews

  • "Jonathan Goldman's Hidden Histories is a wonder and a delight—a lyrical and surprising historical excavation of Jazz Age New York that had me riveted from page one. You will find plenty of familiar figures (Dorothy Parker, Babe Ruth) between these covers, but even more exciting are the unfamiliar ones. This book deserves a prominent place on any shelf of enduring works of New York City history."

    — Jonathan Mahler, author of The Gods of New York

  • "Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York is that rare work of history that is both eminently scholarly—a nearly encyclopedic look at 1920s New York—and enchantingly readable. Goldman brings to vivid life figures, moments, and movements that have for too long been ignored. The book looks backward to look forward; that is, it helps us to understand how we got to where we are now. In particular, Jonathan Goldman explores the lives of figures who have, because of their race, gender, sexuality, or immigration status, been sidelined in our history books as much (or more) than they were in their own time. A fantastic work of engaged scholarship."

    — Hugh Ryan, author of When Brooklyn Was Queer

  • "Jonathan Goldman has composed a compelling narrative chronicling a transformative decade in New York City's history—one whose themes still resonate a century later. You’ll read about the eccentric health obsessions of millionaire businessmen, the audacity of women performers challenging social taboos, the rise of nativist movements, and the fervent debates surrounding women's rights and immigration reform, technological innovations that revolutionized music consumption and the emergence of the cult of personality. What's old is most definitely new again! Goldman's vignettes juxtapose the glittering lives of celebrities with poignant accounts of lost loves and failed enterprises among ordinary citizens—individuals whose contributions helped shape the City's singular and resplendent cultural identity. Like New York City itself, these stories form an intricate tapestry, illuminating the forces that render it endlessly dynamic and culturally rich."

    — Elena Martinez, Folklorist, City Lore/Bronx Music Heritage Center

  • "In Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York, Jonathan Ezra Goldman takes readers on a wild ride through New York City during the 1920s Jazz Age. Goldman challenges the reliance upon a familiar, singular narrative of this period (or any period, for that matter). Viewing daily life through multiple lenses across lines of class, gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity provides readers with the opportunity to understand better the range of human experiences and the complexity of urban politics and society."

    — Shirley J. Yee, author of An Immigrant Neighborhood: Interethnic and Interracial Encounters in New York before 1930