A virtual series featuring author talks with Q&A and conversational book club meetups

Discussions will focus on works that explore a sense of place, our built environment, cultural heritage, New York, and other issues that intersect with historic preservation. The aim of Preservation Book Club is to center diverse voices and perspectives as a way to drive dialogue around important issues that have not necessarily been part of traditional preservation conversations.

We’re following 99% Invisible’s lead and reading Robert Caro’s The Power Broker through 2024. Just like the Preservation League, The Power Broker is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. We have all year to get through this 1,110+ page masterpiece and we hope you’ll read along with us! Zoom meetups TBD — in the meantime, follow along @preservationbookclub.

If having a sign language interpreter present for any of our Book Club programs would facilitate your participation, please let us know at least one week in advance of the particular program: kpeace@preservenys.org

The Borscht Belt Revisited: Author Talk with Marisa Scheinfeld

Wednesday, May 8, 12:00 p.m. | Click here to register
Click here to buy the book

Today the Borscht Belt is recalled through the nostalgic lens of summer swims, Saturday night dances, and comedy performances. But its current state, like that of many other formerly glorious regions, is nothing like its earlier status. Forgotten about and exhausted, much of its structural environment has been left to decay. This illustrated lecture features Marisa Scheinfeld’s photographs of abandoned sites where resorts, hotels and bungalow colonies once boomed in the Catskill Mountain region of upstate New York. The images were shot inside and outside locations that once buzzed with life as year-round havens for generations of people. In her illustrated talk, Scheinfeld will discuss the rise, fall, and impact of the Borscht Belt along with the deeper, more layered meaning she finds in the series. Her book, The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America's Jewish Vacationland, presents a contemporary view of more than forty hotel and bungalow sites. From entire expanses of abandoned properties to small lots containing drained swimming pools, the remains of the Borscht Belt era now lie forgotten, overgrown, and vacant.

Marisa is also Founder and Project Director of the Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project, an organizations that aims to interpret and designate places important to the Borscht Belt’s vibrant history and to consider its impact on American Jewish life, the legacy of the Catskills, New York State history, American culture and entertainment, and the ways in which the era’s rich history is enduringly present and woven into the very fiber of the region.

Marisa Scheinfeld was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1980 and raised in the Catskills. She received a B.A. from the State University at Albany in 2002, and a MFA from San Diego State University in 2011. Her work is motivated by an interest in the landscape and its embedded histories, both apparent and hidden. Marisa’s photographic projects and books are among the collections of the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, Yeshiva University Museum, The National Yiddish Book Center, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art & Life at UC Berkeley, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and The Edmund and Nancy K. Dubois Library at the Museum of Photographic Arts. Marisa is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at SUNY Purchase and working on her second book.

Brownstone Boys Author Talk: For the Love of Renovating

Wednesday, June 5, 12:00 p.m. | Click here to register
Click here to buy the book

For the Love of Renovating: Tips, Tricks & Inspiration for Creating Your Dream Home by Barry Bordelon and Jordan Slocum, is the inspiring, game-changing book every fixer-upper needs, whether the project is budget remodeling or a full gut renovation.

Jordan and Barry, aka the Brownstone Boys are interior designers, authors, DIY-ers, and Renovation Project Managers in Brooklyn, NY. They share a passion for old homes and everything that comes along with them: the details, the quirks, the character, and especially the parts that need lots of love. The spaces they create marry that historic charm with a clean modern design. Barry & Jordan's work has been featured in HGTV, Real Simple, Architectural Digest, Domino Magazine, New York Magazine, Rue, Apartment Therapy, Good Morning America, and on Magnolia Network. Their first book, For The Love of Renovating, is debuting June 4th 2024.

Past Picks

• AUTHOR TALK | Cheap Old Houses: An Unconventional Guide to Loving and Restoring a Forgotten Home by Elizabeth and Ethan Finkelstein

• AUTHOR TALK | Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery by Joseph McGill Jr. & Herb Frazier

• AUTHOR TALK | America Redux: Visual Stories from Our Dynamic History by Ariel Aberg-Riger (May 2023)

• American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods by Bonnie Tsui (April 2023)

• Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies by Leslie Kern (March 2023)

• AUTHOR TALK | Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design by Kristina Wilson (February 2023)

• The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin (January 2023)

• AUTHOR TALK | Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange (December 2022)

• Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush (September 2022)

• Zabar’s: A Family Story, With Recipes by Lori Zabar (August 2022)

• When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole (July 2022)

• The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead (June 2022)

• AUTHOR TALK | Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States by Whitney Martinko (May 2022)

• AUTHOR TALK | Olmsted & Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea by Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr (April 2022)

• Wayward by Dana Spiotta (March 2022)

• AUTHOR TALK | The Sustainers: Being, Building and Doing Good through Activism in the Sacred Spaces of Civil Rights, Human Rights and Social Movements by Catherine Fleming Bruce (February 2022)

• How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (January 2022)

• Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West by Lauren Redniss (October 2021)

• AUTHOR TALK | A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers, 1983-2008 by Jen Jack Gieseking (September 2021)

• The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (August 2021)

• AUTHOR TALK | A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks by Brad Edmondson (July 2021)

• Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (June 2021)

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (May 2021)

• Evicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (April 2021)

• Whose Story is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters by Rebecca Solnit (March 2021)

• AUTHOR TALK | It’s a Helluva Town: Joan K. Davidson, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and the Fight for a Better New York, by Roberta Brandes Gratz (March 2021)

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (February 2021)

• AUTHOR TALK | The Architecture of Downtown Troy: An Illustrated History by Diana S. Waite (January 2021)

• AUTHOR TALK | Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights by Gretchen Sorin (December 2020)

• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (November 2020)

• The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture, and Music by Craig L. Wilkins (October 2020)

• The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin (September 2020)

• Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead (August 2020)

Thank you to our sponsor: Peggy N. & Roger G. Gerry Charitable Trust

Continuing Education Credits

We are pleased to offer 1.0 CE credits for architects who attend Author Talks, offered through the New York State Education Department.

Please note: The League does not report to NYSED the way that other credit programs (ex., AIA) would. Certificates of completion are for each architect's individual records and reporting procedures for maintaining licensure.

Currently Reading

Visit our Bookshop.org Page to stock up on all our past picks and recommendations! The League receives an affiliate commission when you shop through this link.

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