Empire, Egos, and Everything Bagels

An Irreverent History of New York

By: Jordan Blake Carter

Narrated by: Sonya Shomo

New York never learned to whisper. It shouts, sings, honks, and argues its way through four centuries of chaos, creativity, and contradiction. From the Haudenosaunee confederacy to Wall Street excess, from canal diggers to coffee-shop philosophers, Empire, Egos, and Everything Bagels takes listeners on a wild, witty ride through the Empire State’s tangled past.

Meet the Dutch traders who turned profit into policy, the politicians who made graft an art form, the immigrants who built a new world out of tenement bricks, and the dreamers who filled the skyline with ambition. Watch the state reinvent itself again and again through revolution, industry, jazz, stock crashes, blackouts, and billionaires. Every chapter reveals another layer of resilience and ridiculousness, proving that New York has never been just a place. It has always been a performance.

Equal parts history and humor, this book looks at the famous and the forgotten, the glamorous and the grimy, and the endless contradictions that keep New York impossible to define. Whether you love it, fear it, or swear at it from behind a steering wheel, this is the state that built America’s ego and never once apologized.

Jordan Blake Carter’s Irreverent History series combines sharp wit, vivid storytelling, and a historian’s eye for irony. Empire, Egos, and Everything Bagels is history with attitude: bold, brash, and unmistakably New York.

©2025 Jordan Blake Carter (P)2025 Jordan Blake Carter