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The last night of the eighth annual hip-hop jam in Crotona Park in the Bronx came to a close last Thursday night with a performance by the one of the original rap crews, the Cold Crush Brothers.

The Bronx's best known literary titan is probably Edgar Allan Poe, who lived in the borough from 1846 until his death in 1849. But the queen of suspense, Mary Higgins Clark, also hails from the borough, and even the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks conducted research and worked at a local hospitals there. Below is a list of essential literature about the Bronx and by Bronx authors as well as must-read blogs and newspapers from the borough.

It's peak season for severe summer weather. Just this week, the National Weather Service says a tornado tore through a half-mile stretch in the North Riverdale section of the Bronx, touching down along the property of the Hebrew Home for the Aged just west of Palisade Avenue on the east bank of the Hudson River.

It's peak season for severe summer weather. Just this week, the National Weather Service says a tornado tore through a half-mile stretch in the North Riverdale section of the Bronx, touching down along the property of the Hebrew Home for the Aged just west of Palisade Avenue on the east bank of the Hudson River.

Nineteen city schools that were scheduled to close have been spared by a judge’s order. The decision was handed down on Friday. It means the city now has to allow all of the schools to take new students this fall. And since 15 of those schools are high schools, that’s ...

Last November, several city council incumbents went down to defeat. All totaled, a quarter of the 51 member body includes newcomers. And as WNYC's Bob Hennelly reports, even though the rookies have been in for just a few months, they're already shaking things up.

REPORTER: At a recent rally on the ...

Ward Harkavy, Senior Editor at the Village Voice talks about the newspaper’s "Ten Worst Landlords" roundup, a two-part profile of the city’s ten worst landlords in New York City, which appears for the first time since 2006. New York's Ten Worst Landlords, Part 1 appeared in ...

After years of fighting in court, lawyers representing the city, construction companies and more than 10,000 ground zero rescue and recovery workers have agreed to a settlement that could pay up to $657.5 million to responders sickened by dust from the destroyed World Trade Center.

WNYC's Fred Mogul has been following ...

As part of this year's census, the city has launched the biggest grassroots campaign in history to count immigrants who're here illegally. One focus of the effort is northwest Queens: neighborhoods like Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, where there’s been a surge of new Hispanic immigrants since 2000. In the past, ...

Sociologist Sharon Zukin traces the economic and social evolution of six archetypal New York areas—Williamsburg, Harlem, the East Village, Union Square, Red Hook, and the city's community gardens. Her book Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, looks at how the demand for urban "authenticity" helps ...

Governor Paterson says he's suspended a close aide and asked for an investigation by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The request follows an article in today's New York Times which raises questions about the governor and state police intervening in a domestic abuse case involving the aide.

Our Albany reporter Karen DeWitt ...

If someone is behind bars in a jail far away from home, how should they be counted by the state? The controversial prisoner census issue splits largely along an urban and rural divide. New York City politicians are pushing to end the practice of counting prisoners where they’re jailed. But ...

If someone is behind bars in a jail far away from home, how should they be counted by the state? The controversial prisoner census issue splits largely along an urban and rural divide. New York City politicians are pushing to end the practice of counting prisoners where they’re jailed. But ...

As of last month, when New Jersey signed it into law, there are 14 states that allow the use of medical marijuana. Some people think New York could be No. 15, and are watching as a bill winds its way through the state Senate and Assembly. WNYC's Arun Venugopal has ...

City officials want to make it easier for you to get around town, and they want technology to help you do it. So last fall, Mayor Bloomberg released 170 data sets to software developers around the country and challenged them to build applications that better connect people to the city. ...

Gov. David Paterson vetoed the legislature's package of ethics reform, saying it "does not go far enough in addressing the corrosive effects of outside influence and internal decay," that he says plagues "Planet Albany".

Earlier in the day, the governor spoke of his concerns about the bills.

"I think we can do ...

A series of 111 recommendations has just landed on the desks of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christine Quinn. The report was submitted by the NYC Green Codes Task Force, a panel of 200 experts that was convened last year with the purpose of making the city's building code ...

The city's teachers union and the NAACP are suing to stop the city from closing 19 low-performing schools. They claim the city ignored state law by not allowing enough community input and by failing to conduct a thorough study listing how each closure would affect surrounding schools. Hazel Dukes, who ...

A $4 million federal stimulus grant will be flowing into the Bronx as part of an effort to fight the borough's almost 14 percent unemployment rate. The grant is designated to provide training for green jobs.

Rebecca Lurie, director of development for the Consortium for Worker Education, runs the program and ...