O Albany!

Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed offers an eloquent history of his colorful hometown in this marvelous book that's part journalism and part memoir. William Kennedy's celebrated cycle of novels has put Albany on the literary map. In O Albany! we visit the city's ethnic and social neighborhoods. We meet uncommon characters who tread on Kennedy's stage—Erastus Corning, America's longest-running mayor (forty-three years in office); the Prohibition celebrity Jack "Legs" Diamond; the black matriarch Olivia Rorie, who transformed Albany's slums; Nelson Rockefeller and the "greatest marble project in the history of the world"; the political boss Dan O'Connell, who took City Hall in 1921 and never let go, even after he died. Embellished with fifty-five vintage photographs and eleven maps drawn for this book, O Albany! is a historical lover letter from Kennedy to his native city. “A nice blend of nostalgia and serious history...You come away from this book's fascinating view of the American experience, the human experience, feeling hopeful.”—The New York Times Book Review