Publishers Weekly gave Mark Caldwell’s NEW YORK NIGHT: The Mystique and Its History a starred review in its July 25 issue!

Here’s what they have to say:

Caldwell’s poetic approach to New York City is epic as he paints a portrait of New York nightlife from 1643 to the present. He brings past places and people alive with vivid imagery, gleaming like neon colors emerging from a twilight fog. The book becomes a time machine, beginning with 17th-century New Amsterdam’s Wooden Horse tavern (dispensing “the volatile elixir that alternately held [the city] together and blew it apart”). As centuries flash by, Caldwell (The Last Crusade: The War on Consumption 1862-1954) hovers over milestones and architectural splendors. In 1836, the leading outdoor nighttime venue was Niblo’s Garden, “famous for its fireworks and festoons of light,” which glowed on Broadway long before millions of theatergoers began crowding the Great White Way. Many Manhattan industries–“theater, restaurants, newspapers, broadcasting–begin a crescendo of activity with each dusk,” and Caldwell chronicles it all, from gaslights to gangsters, from riots to prizefights, from burlesque to Bickford’s, from opium to heroin from the Beat Generation to the fiction of Richard Yates, from fame to obscurity. Plunging into the heart of darkness, this masterful work succeeds in illuminating the vast shadowy soul of New York.

Mary Cleere Haran, the acclaimed cabaret singer, and Michael Feinstein, the Grammy Award winning pianist and singer, have both read early copies of Mark Caldwell’s NEW YORK NIGHT: The Mystique and Its History, coming out from Scribner this fall. They both raved about it and offered the following blurbs.

Michael said, “New York Night is an amazing tour de force that dazzlingly redefines a city that I thought I knew so well. Mark Caldwell has made me keenly aware that I live in two different cities, and the nocturnal one is much more exciting!”

And Mary wrote: “The magic of this book, the author’s painterly way with light, the indelible images he conjures, lingers on like a Cole Porter melody, constantly shifting from dark to light, from major to minor keys. Mark Caldwell has an extraordinary gift for bringing the legendary and the obscure characters of night-time New York to life. As I read his book, it made me giddy to think I’m one of those fools who’ve made it their mission to keep the magic of the New York night alive.”

Entertainment Weekly raves about GOD WANTS YOU TO ROLL!

This swiftly paced book follows two young scam artists who finagled money up front for cars that never materialized. In 1997 in a church in L.A.’s Compton area, Robert Gomez, 22, climbed into the pulpit and told congregants that his (mythical) late father intended “that items from his estate go to Christian men and women who need help in their lives . . . who want some sort of miracle to demonstrate that God is watching.” Those items–extremely low-priced automobiles–became known to the faithful as Miracle Cars. Soon, Gomez and his partner, James Nichols, had unwitting pastors spread the word for them in a con that continued for five years, spanned the U.S., and brought in some $21 million. Phillips’s suspenseful story delivers what his antiheroes
could not: a terrific ride. A-

The buzz is building for John Phillips III’s GOD WANTS YOU TO ROLL: The $21 Million “Miracle Cars” Scam – How Two Boys Fleeced America’s Churchgoers. Publishers Weekly dubs it “a page-turner” and Kirkus raves, calling the book, “an endlessly engaging, well-written tale of true crime, again proving that P. T. Barnum was righter than he knew.” Congrats, John!