During World War II, New York City was home to servicemen and politicians, but also of saboteurs, spies, and a range of Nazi, Fascist, and Communist sympathizers. In Sedition City, John Strausbaugh chronicled Manhattan's divided loyalties in the Civil War, while in this panoramic history, he traces how the foremost American metropolis would eventually emerge from the war as the new capital of the world. From the Gilded Age to VJ-Day, an amazing array of New Yorkers are shown here as they rose to fame, including Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes, Joe Louis, Robert Moses, and Joe DiMaggio.

"Strausbaugh gives us history as a crazy quilt rather than as the forgone conclusion it sometimes seems…. [A] portrait of an amazingly dynamic, chaotic, trepidation-filled time."—NYTBR