Paperback release of The Legend of Broken

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The Legend of BrokenI’m taking a brief break from the current blog series because the trade paperback of Caleb Carr’s latest novel, The Legend of Broken, has been released today. The US paperback has the same cover design as the hardcover, while the international paperback has a new cover design (shown to the right) that is extremely similar to the e-book released last year. The paperback also contains a new cast of main characters list with pronunciation guide that wasn’t included in the hardcover. Very handy!

If you haven’t already given The Legend of Broken a go, I highly recommend it. For more information about the novel, you can view my thoughts in my original blog post from earlier in the year, and I have included a few comments below from The Washington Post’s review of the novel that I think provides a reasonably good overview of the work. You can also listen to an interview Caleb Carr gave about the novel at the WAMC Radio Book Show website, or watch a talk and Q&A that he gave at a book signing for the novel last year.

The Legend of Broken has also been released in audiobook format by Simon & Schuster Audio, read by George Guidall and Tim Gerard Reynolds. You can read a comprehensive review of the audiobook at Dab of Darkness.

The Washington Post:

Set circa 745 A.D., during Europe’s Dark Ages, “The Legend of Broken” straddles the line between epic fantasy and alternate history … an excellent and old-fashioned entertainment that evolves into a clever discourse on the history and development of modern warfare. Best known for novels like “The Alienist” and “The Angel of Darkness,” Carr is also a noted military historian. “The Legend of Broken” has none of the fin-de-siecle trappings that distinguished his earlier novels, but his gift for integrating historical detail with lurid spectacle rivals those on display in the much-missed BBC/HBO series “Rome.” … Carr’s depiction of 8th-century Europe as a gallimaufry of religions, superstitions, science and cultural tradition is marvelous: His Dark Ages contain incandescent flashes of insight into an era that itself is often resigned to a mere footnote … At its best, “The Legend of Broken” seamlessly blends epic adventure with serious research and asks questions that men and women grappled with in the Dark Ages and still do today.

Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? Part Two

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View Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four of the Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? series.

Welcome to the second post in the “Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street?” series. In Part One, we started to outline the historical context of the square, starting with the park as a gift from the Stuyvesant family before moving onto the development of the district in the 1840s with the arrival of the neighborhood’s first residents and religious institutions. In Part Two, we continue to track the development of the district from the 1850s through to the 1880s, before we reach the critical period for the books, the 1890s.

A district under construction in the 1850s and ‘60s

Although building in the district had begun in the 1840s with a number of unpretentious Greek Revival style residences, store-residences, and churches constructed around Peter Gerard Stuyvesant’s generously donated tract of parkland, the steady migration northward of New York’s middle and upper classes during the mid-19th century meant that the 1850s and ‘60s represented the greatest period of growth for the district. While the wealthiest members of the upper classes were building newly fashionable Italianate brownstone mansions and French chateaux in Fifth Avenue, districts such as Stuyvesant Square were attracting a burgeoning successful merchant class who also wanted to make their mark on the city with still fashionable but less extravagant late Greek Revival, Italianate, Anglo-Italianate, and transitional style row houses.

Unlike the previous decade in which most of the properties built in the Stuyvesant Square district were modest three-story brick dwellings, the 1850s and ‘60s saw the construction of predominantly four-story brick and brownstone homes. Most lots were purchased or leased during this period by a small number of builders on the condition that a suitable residential property would be erected on the land before being sold on to their first owner-occupants. As an example, Robert Voorhies, a prominent builder in the district, purchased eight lots on East 16th Street for $16,800 in January of 1852, developed all eight lots by November of the same year, and sold the completed homes for $11,000 each by the end of the year, providing him with a healthy profit and the district with eight new residents.

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Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? Part One

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View Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four of the Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? series.

It seemed appropriate to begin our travels into the past with the location that inspired the name of the website, so over the next few posts I’ve decided to address a question I’ve been frequently asked in the past: “Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street?” On the surface, this is an easy one to answer: “No, Dr. Kreizler is a fictional character so he did not really live anywhere.” But fact can often be more interesting than fiction, and this certainly proved to be the case for this question when I delved a little deeper. Do you know, for instance, who the real notable residents of East 17th Street and the Stuyvesant Square district were throughout the 19th century? Do you know why Caleb Carr might have selected the location? Before we dive straight in to addressing some of these questions, today’s post will provide a brief outline of the historical context of the square, starting with the park as a gift from the Stuyvesant family before moving onto the development and demographic composition of the district in its earliest days.

A gift from the Stuyvesant family

Stuyvesant_Square_Historic_District_2

The origin of the Stuyvesant Square district traces back to the square’s namesake, Peter Stuyvesant, the famed mid-17th century Governor of New Amsterdam (New York) who purchased the land that Stuyvesant Square now occupies from the Dutch West India Company in 1651. The Governor’s land purchase was expansive and encompassed Bouwerij 1 (“Bouwerij” being the 17th century Dutch term for “farm”) which was usually reserved for each succeeding Director General, the pastureland north of Bouwerij 1, and part of Bouwerij 2. In later years, he went on to purchase the remainder of Bouwerij 2 and part of Bouwerij 3.

Stuyvesant’s property passed to his descendants following his death and in the mid-18th century his great-grandson, Petrus Stuyvesant, inherited most of the land encompassing the Stuyvesant Bouwerij. In 1787, Petrus extended, widened, and named “Stuyvesant Street,” the road that divided Bouwerij 1 and 2, and chose to live north of Stuyvesant Street in “Petersfield,” a farm located in the vicinity of the present 16th Street near Stuyvesant Square that had an uninterrupted view of the East River. Upon Petrus’s death in 1805, his two sons and daughters inherited the various farms that encompassed the original land of Governor Stuyvesant, with the Bowery farm located south of Stuyvesant Street inherited by his son Nicholas William, the “Leanderts” farm inherited by his daughters, and the Petersfield farm inherited by his son Peter Gerard Stuyvesant.

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Change Of Direction

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17th Street seems to have been in a permanent state of revolution in recent months, and more big changes continue in this update. I am extremely happy to report that the site has nine new pages of content up this month, and consequently the site has needed to undergo one final reorganisation in order to accommodate them. However, with any luck, this should be the last major reorganisation that will be needed within the foreseeable future. Hooray!

New Content


The site now has seven new pages containing synopses and selected critical response for all of Caleb Carr’s non-Alienist books, both fiction and non-fiction. These pages can be viewed in the other books section of the site. Due to this, all of the Alienist-related content can now be found within one central Alienist books section of the site.



In terms of Alienist-related content, I am pleased to be releasing a new The Angel of Darkness 50-question quiz to match the 40-question quiz that’s already available for The Alienist. More importantly, seven years after promising it, Stevie Taggert finally has a complete character analysis to match the analyses that are already up for the other six main characters of the books. Excitingly, these two new pieces of content mark the completion of three sections of the Alienist books section site–unless and until a new Alienist book is released. To say that I am thrilled to have finally reached this point in 17th Street’s development is a massive understatement.

Finally, the lovely and talented Tiffany who has been creating some wonderful fanart for the books, recently created a delightfully geeky 19th century portrait of me for the about page of the site as a bit of fun. Anyone who is familiar with the leather bound Franklin Library editions of the Alienist books might notice an extra little bit of geekery in the portrait, too. If you haven’t seen her Alienist work already, you can check it out on the message board.

Changing Direction

With most of the site’s content now up to date, I feel that I can begin to embark on the next phase for 17th Street: a change of direction for the blog. My initial goal for 17th Street was to turn the site into something of an online encyclopedia for the Alienist books, and had consequently planned that the Alienist history section of the site should be developed in much the same way as the other sections of the site. However, the internet has changed since the site was opened, and I feel that this point in the site’s development offers an opportunity to go in a different direction.

Although general website updates and Caleb Carr news will still appear here as appropriate, over the coming months the blog will feature twice weekly posts offering discussion on the real history behind some aspect of the books, as well as discussion about Caleb Carr’s other works. Starting toward the end of this month, the first series of posts will begin so keep an eye out through the RSS feed, twitter, tumblr, the newsletter, or the message board.