100 books like Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners

I had always been aware of the story of Madame Restell, but I always wanted to read something more detailed about her, especially that wasn’t judgmental of her career. Because she was a female physician (mainly known for her abortion services) operating in the 1840s until 1875, her story has often been distorted and sensationalized.

I loved that Wright gave more context to her story and brought it to life through the environmental details of the era. She also emphasized the urgency of the story, particularly the historical moment we are currently living in. Mired in controversy for most of her life, Madame Restell (born Ann Trow Lohman) is a character that Wright renders in a compelling, sympathetic, and human manner.

As part of my work as a tour guide and history author, I’m always on the lookout for books that explore lesser-known aspects of New York City’s history. This is an extraordinary read with beautifully researched and crafted writing. There were so many little details she provided that I thought made this book stand out.

It started in 1929 when White nurses taking care of tuberculosis patients at Seaview Hospital on Staten Island started quitting en masse for various reasons. With promises of better pay and to escape Jim Crow, Black nurses from the South came to the hospital to fill in for the dire shortage. The nurses also became instrumental in finding the cure for tuberculosis. As well as being a gripping read, I think it’s such an important piece of overlooked history.

I loved that Julia Satow uncovers the history of lesser-known female department store professionals who hit the pinnacle of their careers in an era when few women were allowed to have executive careers following the Depression.

What delighted me the most were the details of tactics employed by the women to attract more consumers to the stores, such as selling bestselling novels that glamorized the career of an assistant buyer in the shop or the men’s club in which they could gawk at underwear models while shopping for lingerie for their wives. I was also surprised and amused by the stories of name artists such as Salvador Dali, who created window displays for the stores.

I had frequently heard stories through the New York City history grapevine about the 19th-century Jewish crime boss Mrs. Mandelbaum, but only in a shallow way. That’s why I found it a real treat to read a detailed book about her life and the extraordinary ways in which she pilfered diamonds, silk, and other sought-after Gilded Age goodies.

I was most fascinated by the way Margalit Fox laid out her gang’s intricate methods of robbing banks, including the diagrams that brought these actions to life. Mandelbaum’s demise at the end of the book is surprisingly touching.

I loved this book because the author – a professor at the University of Michigan – honestly addresses a tough subject when informing the reader about the North’s benefit from slavery, a benefit which caused a forever compromise on the subject, leading to the Civil War.

I was shocked when I read Wall Street’s profits were so great it wanted to secede from the union and recreate itself as a separate nation-state on the eve of the Civil War in order to continue trading with both the North and South.

The professor does a wonderful job with documentation, particularly how free persons of color were kidnapped and sold into slavery because of the immense profits. At times, when reading this work, my mouth flew open and stayed open until I finished reading. My mind remains open because of the professor’s valuable contribution to this history.

The main characters in this book were the first relationship goals for me as a teenager. I loved their relationship; the story flow was vividly in my mind as I read it.

I really shouldn’t have seen the movie because often, it doesn’t follow the same storyline, but I will forever love this book and love the main characters' relationship. It was and still is golden to me.

I love this book because it gives you all the juicy stories and details about Black artists during the Harlem Renaissance. Their relationships with each other were all so messy and complicated, and I love learning about my favorite artists and writers who have inspired me as people who were deeply imperfect rather than untouchable, saint-like literary figures who could not be critiqued. It helped me see this as more human.

The people in this book shaped the spaces and sidewalks of a city I know well. Prithi Kanakamedala’s telling of four Black families’ stories and the ways they shaped Brooklyn gave depth to my own way of thinking, writing, and caring about the borough. 

I love this book because it makes people who are often absent from written histories feel vital and real–it introduces us to Black people who have agency in shaping their own lives and places, and specifically, to brilliant Black women who are almost invisible in the archive. 

I could imagine talking with these people, seeing the signs they saw, hearing the smells they smelled, and walking their streets; the book allowed me to see how Black people shaped their place–and shaped the place Brooklyn would become–and how this making of the place was really making the arguments for freedom. What else could you want?

It can be difficult for kids to see their parents as real people, and that’s why I love Some Places More Than Others. When Amara finally convinces her parents she should get to go on a trip with her dad to New York City’s Harlem to meet the grandfather she’s only spoken to on the phone, she uncovers the fact that her dad and her grandfather haven’t spoken in twelve years. I love the depiction of Amara’s father as a person in his own right, someone with a history and his own problems and how, as Amara slowly unravels the mysteries of her father’s past, she begins to understand herself better too.

Although presented as a novel, this book is a memoir of Brown’s life growing up as a Black boy in Harlem in the 1940s and 50s amid poverty, violence, and addiction.

Marlene was in Paris in the summer of 1969 when a young white American man gave her a book to read. Brown’s story smacked me in the face. He lived in an America that was foreign to me—poverty, addiction, violence, incarceration. His experiences growing up on the streets of Harlem were so different from mine in suburban New Jersey.

What I remember most is my wonder at Brown’s description of “conking” his hair—straightening it with chemical relaxers that damaged his hair and burned his scalp. His description has stayed with me for all these years as a reminder of how little I knew and know about the lives of Blacks and their position in a white world.