Hell’s Kitchen Birthplace of The New Yorker, and Bathtub Gin Recipe

This is a book trailer for my new one, The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. And since I made it about Jane Grant, Harold Ross, and Alexander Woollcott, I thought I’d post this recipe. It’s from my earlier work, Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide. It’s the recipe Jane Grant used to make her own bathtub gin. The video was made outside their former duplex, the landmark 412 West Forty-seventh Continue Reading →

Contributing to Cladrite Radio

I kicked in a blog post for my friends at Cladrite Radio about, guess what? Radio. The article is Radio Pioneers of the Algonquin Round Table (tied into my new book this month, The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide) and it goes over the members of the Vicious Circle who were on the air. It was nice to be able to share some information about some of my favorite people, including Franklin Continue Reading →

The Vermont Alexander Woollcott Painting

Now that my book is out, I am looking at what went right and what went wrong with The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. Today I was in a file of letters, and I came across one that I never got a response to. In 2010, I wrote to the director of the Castleton Free Library, in Castleton, Vermont. This is not far from where Alexander Woollcott and his friends had a vacation house Continue Reading →