Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Mary Rossman
Unabridged: 2 hr 18 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 12/14/2023
Of all the great cities in the world, few personify their country like New York City. As America’s largest city and best known immigration gateway into the country, the Big Apple represents the beauty, diversity and sheer strength of the United States, a global financial center that has enticed people chasing the “American Dream” for centuries.
As such, it’s only fitting that Madison Square Garden, the stadium that bills itself as the world’s most famous arena, resides in the heart of Manhattan. Just blocks away from the Empire State Building and situated atop Penn Station, the Garden is always bustling, whether it’s for special events or as the home of the NBA’s New York Knicks and NHL’s New York Rangers, and all the while, performing in the Garden has been a career benchmark for artists as varied as Elvis Presley, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Michael Jackson. As Billie Joel put it, “Madison Square Garden is the center of the universe as far as I'm concerned. It has the best acoustics, the best audiences, the best reputation, and the best history of great artists who have played there. It is the iconic, holy temple of Rock and Roll for most touring acts and, being a New Yorker, it holds a special significance to me.”
The Garden is now nearly 50 years old, making it one of the oldest sporting venues used in professional sports, but the current arena was not the first Madison Square Garden, and the area has a history as an entertainment center dating back to the 19th century. Ironically, its location on the less crowded fringes of Manhattan in the 19th century helped establish it as a place for hucksters like P.T. Barnum to hold events. In fact, a previous Garden was one of New York City’s tallest buildings in the early 20th century, and it was bankrolled by business titans like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.
During the Civil War, over 180,000 black men fought in volunteer units as part of the United States Colored Troop (USCT), but it was only after the end of it that they were allowed to enlist in the Regular Army. They did so in four segregated regime...
In the 1600s, cotton and silk fabrics that bore colorful and exotic printed patterns, known as “calico,” were flying off the shelves of the East India Company’s stores. The rapidly escalating demand for calico had taken a visible ...
In 1804, President Jefferson asked two Virginians-Meriwether Lewis and William Clark-to lead an expedition into the unexplored wilderness of North America. The journals of these explorers are both a priceless piece of national history and a great ad...
By the golden age of the mountain man in the mid-19th-century, there were perhaps only 3,000 living in the West. Their origins were disparate, although they included many Anglo-Americans. A good number hailed from wilderness regions of Kentucky and...
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to whe...
Explore the captivating life of Andrew Jackson!When Jackson left the White House after two presidential terms, he had achieved a rare feat: He left office with even more popularity than when he first entered it. His reputation as a strong president ...
Explore the captivating life of Martin Van Buren History chiefly remembers Martin Van Buren as the eighth president of the United States (1837- 1841). He was also, however, notable for achieving many firsts in American politics. He was th...
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to wh...
By the second half of the 19th century, still less than a century old, the United States had become a regional power. It had soundly defeated its southern neighbor, Mexico, and greatly enlarged itself in the process. America’s navy and mercha...