Occasionally I like to do a Google search for myself and see what comes up. It’s a little intimidating to find out how seemingly all over the ‘net I am, but half of those hits are my own doing–this blog, my Facebook page, my MySpace page, and a lot of web sites I signed up for once and never used again (LinkedIn, I’m looking at you).
Tonight I discovered a review of “The Forbidden Apple” from Publishers Weekly via barnesandnoble.com. My publishers were concerned when the book came out in March that we had not scored a review in PW prior to publication, which they thought bode ill for the book’s sales. It seems that PW did review it as a web-only exclusive on March 16. Here we go:
“From brothels on the Bowery to the crusade to retake Times Square, journalist Long (“chief writer” of the guidebook Sexy New York City) examines the bawdiest characters and exploits in New York City’s history, and those determined to ruin the fun. Contextualizing the gritty, bopping, libidinous culture that most associate with New York in the 20th century, Long introduces readers to outcasts of all kinds, outraged moralists like Anthony Comstock and Ed Koch, popular Prohibition-era dances (the Charleston, the Black Bottom, the Lindy Hop), and iconic phenomena like the film Deep Throat. Long also covers civil rights milestones for gays and women (the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality), and her reach, for much of the book, is far enough to make an apt general history of the city from Reconstruction. Unfortunately, Long’s fastidious research hasn’t discouraged a decidedly liberal bias (“free love” gets unconditional respect, Gov. Giuliani’s clean-up initiatives are condemned on sentimental grounds). Further, the final chapters focus narrowly on Times Square, devolving into a somewhat tiresome diatribe/eulogy. Long should capture the interest of New York history aficionados, but only if they tend to share her lefty permissiveness and it-was-better-when sentimentality. 11 b&w photos.”
GOV. Giuliani?! I suppose I shouldn’t feel too hurt that my last chapter devolved into a somewhat tiresome diatribe/eulogy if PW can’t remember that Giuliani was the mayor of New York, not the governor (yet).
Then I found a nice quote on the Big Red Apple blog giving a shout-out to my Lower East Side Tenement Museum talk on April 2: “History has never been this steamy!”
Another discovery: a lot of people in Malaysia seem to be named Kat Long.