He teaches people how to engage with their environment, and ultimately appreciate it more, even the ugly parts.” —Julia Wertz, author, Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City, 17. Get to know it a little better by taking one of these books out on the town. Working in Brooklyn as hired help for gangster Frank Minna, Tourette’s-suffering orphan, Lionel Essrog has a challenging life. A pedestrian's-eye-view is the vantage point of Vivian Gornick's slim 2015 memoir about her decades in the city, filled with vivid descriptions of encounters with dear friends and dearer strangers. Answer 1 of 6: My husband is fascinated by the NY subway system. New York History Books Showing 1-50 of 535 Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Paperback) by. Not just a gift to me, but to the history of New York City. It's also about power and how it is amassed. James Baldwin’s first major novel chronicles a single day in a sweeping, thought-provoking self-reflection of fourteen-year-old John Grimes. An Imaginative and Action-Packed Adventure, Tieghan Gerard's Guide to a Small but Special Meal at Home. Low Life by Luc SanteMuch has been said about how New York has lost its grit. Interspersed with photographs and eloquently written. We rate the best books about NYC from coming-of-age stories set in Brooklyn to new fiction novels including American Psycho, The Catcher in the Rye and more Books for adults Nineteenth century 1800s. Answered: Https:/…12946728 After the intro, the authors talking about their books about NYC is for the next 12 or so minutes. (See: calling Richard Meier’s One Prospect Park “a massive beached whale,” among other bon mot.) Washington Square - Henry James (1880) A Hazard of New Fortunes - William Dean Howells (1889) 1890s. 32. Editor's Picks: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Stories Read By Your Favorite Celebrities, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Motherless Brooklyn (Movie Tie-In Edition). Find the top 100 most popular items in Amazon Books Best Sellers. Set in the 1940s, Breakfast at Tiffany's limns both the glamour and the darkness of Holly Golightly's life as a society darling/borderline prostitute on the Upper East Side—and the unnamed narrator who's fascinated and repelled by her. These 10 books from the past ten decades, beginning with the 1920s, give us a glimpse into a point in time in the city that never sleeps. 38. That’s exactly what you get here, with photographs—from the gorgeous Guastavino vaulting to dishes like the Oyster Pan Roast—alongside more than 100 classic recipes, some of which date back to the Oyster Bar’s opening in 1913. A History of New York - Washington Irving (1809) 1860s. You may have seen the brilliant film adaptation from Francis Ford Coppola, but have you read the book that started it all? Every city is infinite, infinite piled upon infinite… But multiple maps can at least begin to indicate that richness.” —from an interview with the author on Curbed NY, 34. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets - Stephen Crane (1893) It gets harder, however, when Frank is stabbed to death, and a colleague (and fellow former member of St. Vincent’s Home for Boys), is jailed for the crime. 28. We also asked city experts—architects, critics, authors, and urbanists among them—to give their recommendations. Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York, Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York, Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City, Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul, Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, will affect cities and New York in particular, The neighborhoods with the most bang for your buck, The most walkable neighborhood in every borough, Where to live if you’d rather buy than rent, A guide to NYC’s affordable housing lottery, How to research a building before signing a lease, The best and worst months to buy an apartment, 5 tenant laws your landlord doesn’t want you to know, The best websites for finding an apartment, Why you should ride the Roosevelt Island Tram, Grand Central Terminal in NYC: the ultimate guide, What it’s really like to be a bike commuter, 12 small towns near NYC to visit right now, Yankee Stadium: Where to eat, where to sit, and more, New York City's most iconic buildings, mapped, An illustrated guide to New York’s architectural styles, The most beautiful interiors in New York City, The immigrant architects who built New York City, The most beautiful museums: The Frick, Guggenheim, & more, 10 tips for riding NYC transit like a pro, The best apps to help you navigate the subway. You might think that doing justice to that period of gilt and misery in more than 1,000 pages might get tedious, but this is a made-for-Netflix epic.” —Justin Davidson, New York magazine architecture critic and author of Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York, 11. NYC Reads 365 is a citywide program aimed at encouraging children to read for fun by helping them find interesting high-quality books for independent reading. As he becomes more deeply embroiled in drugs and street crime, we see how his circumstances played a part in the difficult, and at times violent, choices he made, resulting in his arrest and imprisonment. How they are connected, and what they all have to do with the shooting is a story that cannot be missed. And one thing to note: We’ve linked to Amazon here for convenience’s sake, but we of course recommend seeking these out at one of New York City’s amazing independent bookstores: the Strand, Three Lives & Company, Greenlight, Community Bookstore, Word, Book Culture… we could go on, but you get the idea. It's a fascinating portrait of Robert Moses, who was a visionary city planner, but also extremely short-sighted and completely awful in many, many ways. 45. You don't have to be a child yourself to revel vicariously in Eloise's adventures through the gilded heart of Manhattan; we all know what it's like to have so much to do that you get a sort of headache around the sides. We tasked our editors with choosing the books no New York bookshelf should be without—the ones that have informed their understanding of the city’s past, present, and future. Toni Morrison composes a riveting, immersive work in this story of 1920s Harlem. 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