For 15 years, Joel Feingold was a researcher for Mike Wallace, the New York historian responsible for the celebrated "Gotham" series. Wallace died on July 4, 2026, at the age of 83. Here, Feingold reflects on his colleague and his work.
Mike once handed me a matchbook, the kind of paper trinket that served like ticker-tape as a currency of the 20th century city: given out at corner stores and newsstands, boxing matches and cafeterias, free-flowing from cigarette and candy booths on subway platforms.
These flammable paper memes were often used for advertising—get yer alterations hemmed right here! Smoke Nat Shermans. Join the Army! Have a refreshing PAPAYA drink and a frank. You could strike a match on an electioneering pitch or on a slogan: Vote Jimmy Walker and good old Tammany! Boycott the Nazis and German goods. Look for the union label! Don't buy where you can't work! You might strike yer match on the matchbook from the nightclub you went to last Saturday night—or get a light walking home from the train at the end of the day, tired but relieved, as the next shift jammed the streets and the subway. Even the commanding heights had their own matchboxes and matchbooks, monogrammed like: Paul D. Cravath, Partner: Cravath, Swaine & Moore, ACQUISITIONS & TRUSTS.
Mike's matchbook—all caps in an emphatic mid-century corporate-recruiting Helvetica, embossed on a cardboard square flint the hue of a big yellow taxi—said:
EARN BIG MONEY !
BECOME A HISTORIAN
And on the reverse:
SUBSCRIBE TO THE RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW
I doubled over in laughter; this was a great fucking sight gag, I thought—and I also felt in that split-second that I understood what Wallace was trying to tell me about his life's work.