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Alison Stewart, host of WNYC’s All Of It, continues her virtual book club series with author Jonathan Lee.

Lee’s “engrossing” (Wall Street Journal) novel chronicles one man’s rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century.

In The Great Mistake, Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing—on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the thirteenth—shook the city.

Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free.

A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him—yet enlarged it.

To accompany our very New York novel, we’re joined by Claudi of the local band Pinc Louds, who helped keep the city’s live music scene afloat in 2020 with frequent pop-up concerts in Tompkins Square Park. The bandleader will share a couple songs.

How it Works

1. Get the book, reach out to a friend to join, and read along with Alison and Team All Of It
2. Follow @allofitwnyc on Instagram
   where you’ll find polls, questions, fun facts and pictures of other readers
3. Watch the live video stream here on this page as Alison talks with the author

Viewers are encouraged to submit their questions for the author on Twitter and Instagram.

All Of It teams up with the New York Public Library so that New Yorkers can access the book for free through the NYPL app.