New York Myths And Legends

Are there alligators under New York City? Did the military take the lessons learned in the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment” of 1943 and apply the same technology at Montauk—to develop a weapon that would literally drive the enemy insane? Just who was the homeless man who walked a 365-mile route every thirty-four days, dressed in heavy leather? From the Lake Champlain monster to the friendly ghost hostess of Skene Manor, New York Myths and Legends makes history fun and pulls back the curtain on some of the Empire State’s most fascinating stories.

A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths. For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.

This book contains 175 tales drawn equally from the ancient and modern periods of Korea, plus 16 further tales provided for comparative purposes. Nothing else on this scale or depth is available in any western language. Three broad classes of material are included: foundation myths of ancient states and clans, ancient folktales and legends, modern folktales. Each narrative contains information on its source and provenance, and on its folklore type, similarities to folklore types from China, Japan and elsewhere.

Part of our new and growing Myths and Mysteries series, Myths and Mysteries of New York explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in New York’s history. Each episode included in the book is a story unto itself, and the tone and style of the book is lively and easy to read for a general audience interested in New York history.

The Encyclopedia of Epic Myths and Legends is focused on connecting a wide array of cultural myths to modern pop culture and media references influenced by them.

This book provides an up-to-date review of commonly undertaken methodological and statistical practices that are sustained, in part, upon sound rationale and justification and, in part, upon unfounded lore. Some examples of these "methodological urban legends", as we refer to them in this book, are characterized by manuscript critiques such as: (a) "your self-report measures suffer from common method bias"; (b) "your item-to-subject ratios are too low"; (c) "you can’t generalize these findings to the real world"; or (d) "your effect sizes are too low". Historically, there is a kernel of truth to most of these legends, but in many cases that truth has been long forgotten, ignored or embellished beyond recognition. This book examines several such legends. Each chapter is organized to address: (a) what the legend is that "we (almost) all know to be true"; (b) what the "kernel of truth" is to each legend; (c) what the myths are that have developed around this kernel of truth; and (d) what the state of the practice should be. This book meets an important need for the accumulation and integration of these methodological and statistical practices.

Once there was another Sun and another Moon, a different Sun and a different Moon from the ones we see now. Sol was the name of that Sun, and Mani was the name of that Moon. Nevertheless, always behind Sol and Mani wolves went a wolf behind each. The wolves caught on them at last, and they devoured Sol and Mani. And then the world was in darkness and cold. In those times, the Gods lived, Odin and Thor, Hödur and Baldur, Tyr and Heimdall, Vidar and Vali, and Loki, the doer of a good doer of evil. Moreover, the beautiful Goddesses lived then, Frigga, Freya, Nanna, Iduna, and Sif. Nevertheless, in the days when the Sun and Moon were destroyed, the Gods were destroyed too—all the Gods except Baldur who had died before that time, Vidar and Vali, the sons of Odin, and Modi and Magni, the sons of Thor. At that time, too, there were men and women in the world. However, before the Sun and the Moon were devoured and before the Gods were destroyed, terrible things happened in the world. Snow fell on the four corners of the earth and kept on falling for three seasons. Winds came and blew everything away. Moreover, the people of the world who had lived on despite the snow and the cold and the winds fought each other, brother killing brother until all the people were destroyed.