John Strausbaugh

Last updated
John Strausbaugh
Born1951 (age 7273)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
OccupationCultural commentator
GenreNon-fiction


John Strausbaugh (born 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American author, cultural commentator, and host of The New York Times Weekend Explorer video podcast series on New York City. Among other topics, he is an authority on the history of New York City[ citation needed ].

Contents

His 2016 book, City of Sedition: The History of New York City During the Civil War, chronicles the localized conflicts between New York constituent groups and how their respective actions helped or hampered President Lincoln's war effort. [1] His most recent book, Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers during World War II, was issued by Grand Central Publishing in December 2018. [2]

Strausbaugh's 2013 book The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village (Ecco) explains the tumultuous events that made New York's Greenwich Village the cultural engine of America. [3] The book is described by Kurt Andersen as "the definitive history of America's bohemian wellspring and prototypical modern neighborhood with all the verve and fun and rigor it deserves."[ citation needed ]

Strausbaugh's previous books have examined the history of recreational drug use (The Drug User: Documents 1840-1960, co-edited with Donald Blaise, with an introduction by William S. Burroughs, 1990), the intersection of politics and popular culture in the White House (Alone With the President, 1992), the priesthood that spreads the gospel of Elvisism (E: Reflections on the Birth of the Elvis Faith, 1995) and Rock and Roll's infidelity to the youth culture that created it (Rock 'Til You Drop: The Decline From Rebellion to Nostalgia, 2001, [4] which was declared “the definitive word on the senescent Rolling Stones” by The New York Times ).

Strausbaugh's controversial[ citation needed ] 2006 book, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture, explored race relations in popular culture, including the pervasive and long-lasting impact of blackface performance in rock and roll, hip-hop, advertising, “gangsta-lit” and contemporary Hollywood filmmaking. [5] His book Sissy Nation: How America Became a Culture of Wimps & Stoopits was published by Virgin Books USA in 2008. [6] "Straw: Finding My Way," which Strausbaugh collaboratively wrote with Darryl Strawberry, was published on April 28, 2009, by Ecco, a division of HarperCollins publishing.

Strausbaugh has written for The New York Times , The Washington Post , Forbes Magazine , National Review , NPR, The Baltimore Sun , and Cabinet magazine. He served as editor of The New York Press from 1990 until late 2002, when the paper was sold to Avalon Equity Partners. He established the paper as an independent thinking and often irreverent voice,[ citation needed ] which directly competed with the city's more traditionally liberal downtown paper, The Village Voice .

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenwich Village</span> Neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City

Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village also contains several subsections, including the West Village west of Seventh Avenue and the Meatpacking District in the northwest corner of Greenwich Village.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blackface</span> Theatrical makeup caricaturing Black people

Blackface is the practice of non-black performers using burnt cork or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jump Jim Crow</span> American song about Jim Crow

"Jump Jim Crow", often shortened to just "Jim Crow", is a song and dance from 1828 that was done in blackface by white minstrel performer Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice. The song is speculated to have been taken from Jim Crow, a physically disabled enslaved African-American, who is variously claimed to have lived in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh. The song became a 19th-century hit and Rice performed it all over the United States as "Daddy Pops Jim Crow".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxwell Bodenheim</span> American writer (1891–1954)

Maxwell "Bogey" Bodenheim was an American poet and novelist. A literary figure in Chicago, he later went to New York where he became known as the King of Greenwich Village Bohemians. His writing brought him international notoriety during the Jazz Age of the 1920s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minstrel show</span> Form of musical theater originating in the United States under racial segregation

The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuck Knipp</span> Canadian comedian (born 1961)

Chuck Knipp is a Canadian comedian and nurse best known for his vocal characters. His best known character is Shirley Q. Liquor. Knipp also performed as spirituality seeker Betty Butterfield. Knipp's performance of the Liquor character were controversial, and garnered protests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Sanders</span> American poet and activist (born 1939)

Edward Sanders is an American poet, singer, activist, author, publisher and longtime member of the rock band the Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and hippie generations. Sanders is considered to have been active and "present at the counterculture's creation."

James Wolcott is an American journalist, known for his critique of contemporary media. Wolcott is the cultural critic for Vanity Fair and contributes to The New Yorker. He had his own blog on Vanity Fair magazine's main site which was awarded a Webby Award in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Powers</span> American writer and music critic

Ann K. Powers is an American writer and popular music critic. She is a music critic for NPR and a contributor at the Los Angeles Times, where she was previously chief pop critic. She has also written for other publications, such as The New York Times, Blender and The Village Voice. Powers is the author of Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, a memoir; Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul in American Music, on eroticism in American pop music; and Piece by Piece, co-authored with Tori Amos.

Edward Sorel is an American illustrator, caricaturist, cartoonist, graphic designer and author. His work is known for its storytelling, its left-liberal social commentary, its criticism of reactionary right-wing politics and organized religion. Formerly a regular contributor to The Nation, New York Magazine and The Atlantic, his work is today seen more frequently in Vanity Fair. He has been hailed by The New York Times as "one of America's foremost political satirists". As a lifelong New Yorker, a large portion of his work interprets the life, culture and political events of New York City. There is also a large body of work which is nostalgic for the stars of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood when Sorel was a youth. Sorel is noted for his wavy pen-and-ink style, which he describes as "spontaneous direct drawing".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances FitzGerald (journalist)</span> American journalist and historian

Frances FitzGerald is an American journalist and historian, who is primarily known for Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972), an account of the Vietnam War. It was a bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize, Bancroft Prize, and National Book Award.

<i>All This and Rabbit Stew</i> 1941 film directed by Tex Avery

All This and Rabbit Stew is a 1941 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Tex Avery. The cartoon was released on September 13, 1941, and features Bugs Bunny.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Long (actor)</span> American actor

Walter Huntley Long was an American stage and film character actor who between 1909 and the late 1940s performed in nearly 200 screen productions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin Franklin Keith</span> American vaudeville theater owner (1846–1914)

Benjamin Franklin Keith was an American vaudeville theater owner, who played an important role in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Shoumatoff</span> American writer (born 1946)

Alexander Shoumatoff is a journalist and author who was Vanity Fair Magazine's senior-most contributing editor from 1986 to 2015, and a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1978 to 1987. He authored 11 books and was a founding contributing editor of Outside Magazine and Condé Nast Traveler. Most of his books are extensions of long-form journalism that has appeared in dozens of American and international magazines and other literary sources and collections.

Whiteface is a type of performance in which a person of color uses makeup in order to appear fair-skinned. The term is a reversal of the form of performance known as blackface, in which makeup was used by a performer to make themselves look like a black person, usually to portray a stereotype. Whiteface performances originated in the 19th century, and today still occasionally appear in films. Modern usages of whiteface can be contrasted with blackface in contemporary art.

Johnathan Daniels, known professionally as John Daniels, is an American former actor, songwriter, producer and club owner.

<i>Outta Season</i> 1969 studio album by Ike & Tina Turner

Outta Season is a 1969 album by Ike & Tina Turner, released on Blue Thumb Records in the US and Liberty Records in the UK. The album contains their signature live song "I've Been Loving You Too Long."

<i>The Greenwich Village Follies</i>

The Greenwich Village Follies was a musical revue that played for eight seasons in New York City from 1919 to 1927. Launched by John Murray Anderson, and opening on July 15, 1919, at the newly constructed Greenwich Village Theatre near Christopher Street, the show's success has been credited in part to its timing: as a non-union production, it was unaffected by the then-current actors' strike.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eve's Hangout</span> Lesbian bar in New York City (1925–1926)

Eve's Hangout was a New York City lesbian nightclub established by Polish-Jewish feminist Eva Kotchever in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, in 1925. The establishment was also known as "Eve Adams' Tearoom", a pun on the names Eve and Adam.

References