This Novel Revisits a Power Broker Who Trod Lightly and Left a Big Footprint
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Andrew Haswell Green, having reached 83 years old, was murdered outside his Park Avenue home in 1903. In the days after his death, this newspaper published an article in which it was written: “His name had been associated with some of the most creditable enterprises ever devised for the benefit of the city. It will long be gratefully remembered.”
One presumable motivation behind Jonathan Lee’s fourth novel, “The Great Mistake,” is that Green has not been remembered. Or at least, his name faintly echoes rather than resounds, despite the fact that he was an integral force behind the creation of Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Public Library, among other postcard destinations in the city.
Carolyn Quimby reviews Jonathan Lee’s The Great Mistake. Plus short reviews of Jacky Davis’s Sunny-Side Up, Phoebe North’s Strange Creatures, Michael Slaby’s For All the People, Edward M. Cohen’s Before Stonewall, and Meg Bashwiner and Joseph Fink The First Ten Years.