For last 100 years, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City has stood as the capital of Black America and the capital of the global African diaspora. Yet Harlem is so big and so varied that it contains smaller sections with distinct identities and histories of their own.

Davida Siwisa James explores two parts of Harlem in her book Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries, published by the Empire State Editions imprint of Fordham University Press. Exploring four centuries of life in a part of upper Manhattan that stretches from 135th Street to 165th Street and from Edgecombe Avenue to the Hudson River, James looks at the encounters between the Lenape and Dutch settlers, the rural village that was Harlem, and the Harlem Renaissance luminaries who lived in Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill.

James blends the personal and the historical to illuminate great events, fascinating people, and amazing architecture. In a time when Harlem is going through great demographic and cultural changes, she explores both the long history of Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill and their significance for the history Black America.

Robert W. Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian, professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University, and the author of When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers (Cornell, 2025). Email: rwsnyder@rutgers.edu.

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