New York: An Illustrated History
Author: Ric Burns
The companion volume to the PBS television series, with more than 500 full-color and black-and-white illustrations
This lavish and handsomely produced book captures all the beauty, complexity, and power of New York -- the city that seems the very embodiment of ambition, aspiration, romance, desire; the city that has epitomized the entire parade of modern life, with all its possibilities and problems. Chronicling the story of New York from its establishment as a Dutch trading post in 1624 to its global preeminence today, the book is at once the biography of a great city and a vivid exploration of the myriad forces -- commercial, cultural, demographic -- that converged in New York to usher in the contemporary world.
Weaving the strands of the city's sweeping history into a single compelling narrative, New York carries us through nearly four centuries of turbulent growth and change -- from the first settlement on the tip of "Manna-hata" Island to the destruction wrought by the Revolutionary War; to the city's stunning emergence in the nineteenth century as the nation's premier industrial metropolis; to the waves of early-twentieth-century immigration that forever transformed the city and the nation; to New York's transfiguration as the world's first modern city -- pioneering skyscrapers, apartment houses, subways, and highways -- and its role as the birthplace of so much of American popular culture. Along the way, we witness the building of the city's celebrated landmarks and neighborhoods, from the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building and the United Nations; from Wall Street and Times Square to the Lower East Side, Harlem, andSoHo.
The book brims with vibrant illustrations, including hundreds of rare photographs, paintings, lithographs, prints, and period maps. The narrative incorporates the voices and stories of men and women -- statesmen, entrepreneurs, artists, and visionaries -- who have lived in and built the city: an extraordinary cast of characters that includes Peter Stuyvesant, Alexander Hamilton, John Jacob Astor, Walt Whitman, Boss Tweed, Jacob Riis, Emma Lazarus, J. P. Morgan, Al Smith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Gershwin, Fiorello La Guardia, Robert Moses, and Jane Jacobs.
Accompanying the book's narrative are interviews with Robert A. Caro, David Levering Lewis, and Robert A. M. Stern, and essays by a group of distinguished New York historians and critics -- Kenneth T. Jackson, Mike Wallace, Marshall Berman, Phillip Lopate, Carol Berkin, and Daniel Czitrom -- who add their insights about the city to this splendid history.
From the Hardcover edition.
New York Times
A ravishing book . . . It can easily fill a winter of reading and browsing.
Publishers Weekly
A companion to an upcoming PBS series, this lavishly illustrated history is an engaging and intelligent work in its own right, presenting a coherent overview without ever glossing over thorny historical or political questions. By supplementing their well-researched text with photographs, paintings, newspaper headlines and interviews with historians and social critics, Burns (The Civil War, with Ken Burns) and Sanders have produced a volume that is as attractive as it is perceptive. Arranged chronologically, the book manages to capture some of the diverse elements--such as the immigrant communities, labor unrest, traditional and avant-garde cultures, crime and architecture, among other factors--that continue to play important roles in the city's evolution. For example, the section on Greenwich Village, "The Republic of Washington Square," contains a succinct history of the area as a cultural engine, with rare photographs and illuminating quotes from Edmund Wilson and Floyd Dell. The section on the Harlem Renaissance provides a comprehensive analysis of the movement's development and importance, aptly illustrated and contextualized with an interview with David Levering Lewis. Burns and Sanders have successfully marshaled a huge amount of material into a format that is informative and highly entertaining. BOMC History Book Club selection. (Nov.) FYI: PBS will launch the 12-hour series New York on November 18.
Library Journal
This splendid history of America's premier city was written by Burns, director of such television documentaries as Coney Island and The Donner Party, and architect/writer Sanders. They were ably assisted by Ades, the picture editor, who assembled the 500 archival maps, paintings, prints, and contemporary photographs--all of which are visual delights that greatly enhance the text. Additional text is contributed by nine historians, urbanists, and literary figures. The companion volume to this fall's 12-hour PBS television series on the city, the book presents New York's sprawling history from the first sightings of the New York harbor by European explorers, through its founding as a Dutch colony in 1609, the beginning of English rule in 1664, the effects of the American Revolution, and on into the 19th and 20th centuries, which witnessed the city's emergence as the nation's leading seaport and its commercial, financial, and cultural capital. Both feared and widely emulated for its wealth and power, the city is a prodigy late 20th-century civilization. Burns's book helps explain how it got that way. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/99.]--Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., New York
Entertainment Weekly - Daly
New York: An Illustrated History offers two kinds of pleasure: hundreds of carefully chosen photographs and a thoughtful, well written text.
The New York Times Book Review - David Walton
The book is, as such collaborations go, narratively crisp, balanced and well researched, with room for everyone from Washington Irving to Allen Ginsberg and from Emma Lazarus to Le Corbusier to have a say...
Table of Contents:
| Introduction: City of Desire | |
| 1 | The Country and the City, 1609-1825 | 2 |
| Alexander Hamilton, the New Yorker with a National Vision | 62 |
| 2 | Order and Disorder, 1825-1865 | 68 |
| "The Locomotive of These United States" | 131 |
| 3 | Sunshine and Shadow, 1865-1898 | 138 |
| The Secrets of the Great City | 210 |
| 4 | The Power and the People, 1898-1919 | 216 |
| Where the Modern World Took Shape, 1898-1929 | 300 |
| 5 | Cosmopolis, 1919-1931 | 308 |
| Harlem Renaissance | 388 |
| Cosmopolitan Capital: New York in the 1920s | 391 |
| 6 | The City of Tomorrow, 1931-1939 | 394 |
| Robert Moses: The Power Broker | 458 |
| 7 | The City and the World, 1939-1969 | 466 |
| The Lonely Crowd: New York After the War | 536 |
| Trauma, Apocalypse, Boom, Aftermath: New York City in the Last Twenty-five Years | 542 |
| City of the Millennium | 550 |
| Epilogue: The Center of the World | 558 |
| Acknowledgments | 606 |
| Selected Bibliography | 607 |
| Index | 612 |
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Eyewitness Travel Great Britain
Author: Roger Williams
Each of Great Britain's countries that have grown out of kingdoms, principalities, shire, fiefs, boroughs, and parishes has its own special flavor. This derives from Britain's landscape, its resources and its history, all which have shaped its peoples, too. For more information about Great Britain's history, castles, gardens, restaurants, tours, national parks, stately homes and cathedrals look to Eyewitness Travel Great Britain.
- Annually revised and updated
- Beautiful new full-color photos, illustrations, and maps
- Includes information on local customs, currency, medical services, and transportation
- Consistently chosen over the competition in national consumer market research
