The transit historian and author of Under the Sidewalks of New York delivers a lively and authoritative history of New York City’s fabled subway. On the afternoon of October 27, 1904, ordinary New Yorkers descended beneath the sidewalks for the first time to ride the electric-powered trains of the newly inaugurated Interborough Rapid Transit System. More than a century later, the subway has expanded greatly, weaving its way into the fabric of New York’s unique and diverse urban life. In A Century of Subways, transit historian Brian J. Cudahy offers a fascinating tribute to New York’s storied and historic subway system, from its earliest beginnings and many architectural achievements, to the ways it helped shape today’s modern metropolis. Taking a fresh look at one of the marvels of the twentieth century, Cudahy creates a vivid sense of this extraordinary system and the myriad ways the city was transformed once New Yorkers started riding below the ground.

Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style. These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

Take the train to dreamland with this board book version of the chugging bedtime tale, the perfect companion to Where Do Diggers Sleep at Night? and Where Do Jet Planes Sleep at Night? Have you ever wondered what little trains do when it’s time for bed? Same things you do! Steam trains, freight trains, subways—and more!—wash up, have a snack, load their teddies for storytime, and get rocked to sleep by mommy and daddy trains beneath a blanket of stars. Little one-track-mind train lovers will be tickled to see how bedtime is just the same for their favorite vehicles as it is for them. “Train lovers will be sure to take this bedtime read for a ride.” —School Library Journal

COMRADE V. sits at the white console in the sparsely furnished, windowless room where he is held prisoner reading the daily printout that supplies a constantly altered version of his case history. The story that emerges from the details on the printout, V. concurs, is in many respects accurate: the incredible child prodigy who became a brilliant mathematician, highly respected in his own country and honored throughout the world. Beyond this point, V.'s story and that of his captors differ drastically. According to V., an increasing political awareness made him dangerous to a government which stripped him of his prestigious position and imprisoned him in a mental institution near the capital. And now, V. is convinced, both the daily printout and his psychiatrist are conspiring to shake his belief in his own sanity.

Set within the framing of a contemporary rehearsal of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, A Dol's Life imagines what happened after Nora slammed the door , leaving her husband Torvald. Borrowing train fare from a young violinist, Otto, she travels to Christiania, where she begins to work in a cafe. Soon she becomes involved not only with Otto, but Eric Didrickson, the wealthy owner of shipping lines and fish canneries, and Johan Blecker, a lawyer. Scenes of her new life mingle with flashbacks to her old.

When it first opened on October 27, 1904, the New York City subway ran twenty-two miles from City Hall to 145th Street and Lenox Avenue—the longest stretch ever built at one time. From that initial route through the completion of the IND or Independent Subway line in the 1940s, the subway grew to cover 722 miles—long enough to reach from New York to Chicago. In this definitive history, Clifton Hood traces the complex and fascinating story of the New York City subway system, one of the urban engineering marvels of the twentieth century. For the subway's centennial the author supplies a new foreward explaining that now, after a century, "we can see more clearly than ever that this rapid transit system is among the twentieth century's greatest urban achievements."