![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/book_cover.jpg\"\/)
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\n June 30, 2026
\n by Lori Cassels\n <\/p>\n
\u201cHidden Histories of Jazz Age New York, From the Suppressed to the Strange,\u201d by Jonathan Ezra Goldman.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cBe careful in New York, Katie, the streets are filled with gangsters and tommy guns shooting up the streets.\u201d Katie Connelly, my grandmother, was warned before she departed Sligo in 1924.<\/p>\n
Flappers, the soaring stock market, speakeasies and, yes, gangsters shooting up the streets with their tommy guns are just one of the \u00a0many images \u00a0that come to mind when we ponder New York in the 1920s. \u00a0However, as \u00a0Dr. Jonathan Ezra Goldman reveals in \u201cHidden Histories of Jazz age New York, From the Suppressed to the Strange,\u201d there is always more to the story. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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Goldman, recently named Distinguished Professor of Humanities at New York Institute of Technology, \u00a0has exhaustively researched \u00a0this Jazz Age era account that informs additionally with illustrations, newspaper clippings and photographs.<\/p>\n
Truly, there is so much history to delve into this seminal work, but the review will focus inevitably on the Irish-American highlights. \u00a0 And what would my grandmother, Katie Connelly, have encountered in 1924 in New York\u2019s \u00a0bustling, hectic, multiethnic, rebellious, cultural m\u00e9lange? \u00a0<\/p>\n
Depending on the neighborhood, \u00a0an immigrant could\u2019ve been welcomed or reviled. Irish-American police of this era would either find room for a fellow from the \u201cold country\u201d on the force; or just as easily billy-club him if deemed a troublemaking anarchist.<\/p>\n
Readers can ascend \u00a0with \u00a0the \u00a0skyscraper construction \u00a0workers as New York\u2019s skyline rises \u00a0ever upward; as well as muck in the trenches with the \u201csandhogs,\u201d the tunnel workers \u00a0expanding the subways outwards \u00a0to the boroughs. \u00a0Goldman specifically cites F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s \u201cThe Great Gatsby,\u201d \u00a0as the zeitgeist for this era, where \u00a0the narrator, Nick Carraway hob-nobs with the \u00a0upper crust of society amidst spectacle and opulence, yet deep down knows that despite \u00a0the host\u2019s generosity, the Irish American was still an outsider.<\/p>\n
The chapter about the Irish in New York City is brimming with vignettes from Eamon de Valera in the \u00a0920 St. Patrick\u2019s Day Parade to Zelda and F. Scott \u00a0Fitzgerald\u2019s wedding. \u00a0Fascinating details of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce visits to the city \u00a0swelling Irish American pride and their influence on Irish American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eugene O\u2019Neill. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Goldman skillfully covers broad movements \u2014 such as the Harlem Renaissance, immigration reform and Prohibition \u2014 to the minutiae, \u00a0and with his compelling hidden histories manages to strike a \u00a0personal chord with the reader In the chapter \u201cAssimilation.\u201d The author enlightens us about unique holidays that ethnic groups celebrated, such as \u00a0one from my mother\u2019s childhood, an odd custom, \u201cragamuffins,\u201d whereby children dressed as paupers begging for coins on Thanksgiving.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As James Joyce\u2019s work is a tribute to his beloved Dublin, Goldman\u2019s \u00a0\u201cHidden Histories \u00a0of Jazz Age New York\u201d pays homage to the unsung heroes, the radical influencers and characters less than heroic of the early 1920s in this scholarly yet assessible work. (Goldman is, incidentally, the current president of the \u00a0New York James Joyce Society.)<\/p>\n
Did my grandmother, Katie Connelly ever hear the rat-tat-tat of the infamous tommy guns? The story goes: One early summer afternoon in1924, she exited the subway on East 86th street, she heard the gun shots and hid in every building vestibule she could find. Arriving at her cousin Lucy\u2019s apartment shaking and exclaiming, \u201cThe gangsters are out and they\u2019re shooting up the streets with their tommy guns!\u201d To which Lucy replied, \u201cYou greenhorn, there\u2019s no tommy guns! \u00a0It\u2019s fireworks \u2014 today is the Fourth of July!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cHidden Histories of Jazz Age New York\u201d is chock full of fascinating tidbits and it both celebrates and questions the Jazz Age in New York City; and also enables me to see the New York City streets that Katie Connelly once walked.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 30, 2026 by Lori Cassels \u201cHidden Histories of Jazz Age New York, From the Suppressed to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[7871,9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-282795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-irishecho","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}