Graham Russell Gao Hodges, author of David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City, on Mother Zion A.M.E. Church and its nationally influential antislavery leaders.

Brendan Cooper, author of The Domino Effect: Politics, Policy, and the Consolidation of the Sugar Refining Industry in the United States, 1789–1895, on the rise and fall of the enormous Williamsburg, Brooklyn factory.

Bob McGee, author of The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers, on the iconic stadium (formerly in Crown Heights) and its still-bemoaned departure.

Sharon Zukin, author of Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture, on ‘B. Altman’s,’ the famous Midtown department store, and the new world of consumption it helped make.

Stacy Horn, author of Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York, on the notorious ‘lunatic asylum,’ prison, workhouses, and hospitals that once stood on Roosevelt Island.

Shane White, author of Prince of Darkness and Stories of Freedom in Black New York, on the African Grove, a theater company which played with an entirely black cast and crew to mostly black audiences in the last days of slavery in NYC.

Alexander Manevitz, author of The Rise and Fall of Seneca Village: Remaking Race and Space in Nineteenth-Century New York City (forthcoming), on the free black community destroyed to build Central Park.

Leslie Alexander, author of African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861, on the African meetinghouse, headquarters of the secret society that created the state’s first incorporated black organization; for a century, NYC’s most prominent black mutual aid group.

Christopher F. Minty, author of “American Demagogues”: The Origins of Loyalism in New York City (forthcoming), on James Rivington and his controversial printshop in Hanover Square.

Russell Shorto, author of the national bestseller The Island at the Center of the World, on Fort Amsterdam and the Dutch colony it protected.