A surprising amount of important revolutionary history happened throughout the present-day five borough city, and the author supplements his never-dull book with walking tours of the places he mentions.” —Michael Miscione 22. A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin“A beautifully written memoir of Kazin growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn in the 1920's. Sign up for news about books, authors, and more from Penguin Random House, Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network. 2. One of the most iconic novels of midcentury New York (thanks in part to Audrey Hepburn’s fabulous portrayal of Holly Golightly in the film version), this novel will make you want to head over to 5. Put all of them on your reading list: 1. 1920s Jazz by Toni Morrison 25. What’s a small student loan compared to the profit of a massive New York City media corporation? The objects featured are wonderfully diverse—oysters, subway tokens, the Domino Sugar Refinery sign, and the bagel all make appearances—and the stories are compulsively readable. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. 49. This rich visual survey of mom-and-pop New York, filled with large format photos, shows why these corner spots are vital to our city's character.” —from Curbed.com’s 101 books about where and how we live, 41. 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. Find the top 100 most popular items in Amazon Books Best Sellers. And, of course, it's about NYC—how and why it looks the way it does today.” —Roz Chast, New Yorker cartoonist and author of Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York. 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. The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead“Through reworking figures of speech, slogans, and clichés about life in New York City, Colson Whitehead draws and reframes the familiar in a play between hilarity and insight. Take a tour of New York City’s incredible food culture in this behind-the-scenes look at the industry, from the voices of those who know it best. 28. A History of New York in 101 Objects by Sam RobertsBuilding off a New York Times feature that solicited reader input on the tchotchkes that best represent New York, Roberts’s 2014 book is a compact, yet thorough, history of the greatest city in the world. But getting to the upper echelons is one thing; staying there, amidst the ambition, the greed, and the betrayals, is another. The Lonely City – Olivia Laing He talks about his walks out of Brownsville to the 'city" and reflects on his connection/disconnection to the world. This is a great American novel like no other. 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. The Other Islands of New York City by Sharon Seitz and Stuart Miller“It first came out in 1996, and is still one of the best introductions to the geography, ecology, and history of the city’s waterfront. Gotham by Mike Wallace“While it only covered the period up to 1898 (in 1,424 pages), I found the themes—especially about the cyclical nature of the city—to be timeless and applied them in my time as Deputy Mayor. And in coming up with this list, which narrows that vast assemblage down to just 50 essential books, our goal was simple: to provide a starting point for anyone who wants to understand how New York became, well, New York. 47. It's as much a memory novel as it is a kids' thriller, bringing to detailed life a few city blocks that, to the eyes of a sixth grader, can seem infinite. The way Joseph Mitchell writes is batshit wonderful, funny, spare, and kind. She determined to become a lawyer despite the nay-sayers, and not only did she achieve this, she became one of the top law officials in the country. 13. Maybe that’s why writers have immortalized New York City in nonfiction and novels, poetry collections and memoirs — and why readers will never get enough. 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. Never fear: books have your back. Losers Live Longer. From the intimate jazz bars of Greenwich Village to the vibrant streets of Harlem, the dazzling lights of the Theater District to the quiet brownstones of Brooklyn; this city has something for everybody! The Bowery Boys: Adventures in Old New York by Greg Young and Tom Meyers“One of the running themes of this book is not just about the history of New York but how New Yorkers looked at their own history throughout history.”—Young, in an interview with the authors on Curbed NY, 5. Tim Sultan’s devotion to this dive bar in Brooklyn effuses his words, giving a warmth to his descriptions of the late nights bartending here after quitting the rat race. Enjoyable listening and may give you some ideas for books about NYC to read. His twisted narration as he drinks, whores, and schmoozes his way through New York and London both sickens and entertains. Professional chefs, line cooks, street vendors and more, from the classic restaurants to the up-and-coming, come together to create a rich and complex account of food in New York City. He awes over the implausible mess of infrastructure and humanity, and offers astute observations like this: "New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience—if they did they would live elsewhere. Eloise by Kay Thompson and Hilary KnightWho didn't want to be Eloise when they were a kid? The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir by Vivian GornickAny New Yorker with a good cobbler will tell you that the city is best experienced on foot—treading its streets and avenues and being open to surprising encounters. 31 Must-Read New York City Books New York City: The Big Apple, The Center of the Universe, the City of Dreams, the City That Never Sleeps, the City So Nice, They Named it Twice (and more). Who’s to blame for MTA’s declining ridership? Discover the best New York City Travel Books in Best Sellers. Everyone has a different take on this bustling, diverse city. When door-to-door salesman Joe and his wife Violet moved from the rural South to New York, everything seemed grand—until the day he shoots his teenage mistress, and Violet attacks her corpse at the funeral in a moment of passion. New York City Transit Authority: Objects by Brian KelleyFrom the team that brought you the reissue of the NYCTA Standards Manual comes this compendium of subway ephemera, painstakingly collected and catalogued by photographer Brian Kelley. Enjoyable listening and may give you some ideas for books about NYC to read. Schlepping strollers onto subways, cramming a kid’s worth of stuff into a small apartment, wait-listing your fetus for preschool—there are times when raising a family in New York seems utterly impossible. David McCullough’s 500-plus page book takes you through every detail, making this an indispensable resource for New York history and architecture buffs. After being expelled from a Southern Negro college in the 1930s, the nameless narrator of. 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. Everything has a history, and you can see that history embedded almost like a fossil or a series of archeological layers in the city that you're seeing in front of you.”—from an interview with the author on Curbed NY. Stuart Little by E.B. 44. In this crackling, wry memoir, she reveals just how she came to be the most trusted adviser on 5. ", 16. 46. Greater Gotham by Mike Wallace“The monumental sequel to the monumental Gotham covers just 21 years, from the consolidation of New York and Brooklyn to 1919—but what years they were! The book is so frank—about sex, power, and the profound misogyny of American life in the 1930s—that it caused a terrific scandal. My local library has zilch! Have you ever wondered about the history of New York City? The Works by Kate Ascher“You don’t have to be an infrastructure geek to love this illustrated guide to everything we take for granted—what our water, electricity, garbage collection, transit systems and more actually look like beneath the surface, and how they actually work. Elizabeth Gilbert tells a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure). We’ll never know, but Goldin and Lubell’s hulking 2016 book lets us imagine. The AIA Guide to New York City by Norval White and Elliot WillenskyCome for the in-depth descriptions of every major New York building, stay for the bitchy commentary about the ones the authors didn’t like all that much. That is what I thought after I read Up in The Old Hotel. One thing that sets her apart, though, is her family’s vast fortune, to which she is the heiress. New York City Tourism New York City Accommodation New York City Bed and Breakfast New York City Holiday Rentals New York City Holiday Packages New York City Flights New York City Restaurants A History of New York - Washington Irving (1809) 1860s. Catherine Sloper is fairly average. See subway delays visualized in real time. 26. Theaters and saloons, opium and cocaine dens, gambling and prostitution—it’s all there, alongside a look at why law enforcement failed to rein it in. You may have seen the brilliant film adaptation from Francis Ford Coppola, but have you read the book that started it all? Approaching this memoir with self-acceptance and understanding, Piri Thomas brings hope to a life of hardship. See All Formats & … To delve into the dark underbelly of the city, look no further than Luc Sante’s landmark tome. New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson“A fantastic book for anyone trying to imagine how climate change and rising waters will affect cities and New York in particular. 29. It is one of my favorite novels, full stop, but it is also one of my favorite fictional depictions of the city I call home.” —Rumaan Alam, author, Rich and Pretty, 30. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman CapoteThough many people are on more familiar terms with Blake Edwards's iconic film adaptation, it's worth reading the crystalline prose of Truman Capote's original 1958 novella. Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York by James T. Murphy and Karla L. Murphy“Beyond the quaint graphics, hand-made signs, and charming staff, independent storefronts gives us a connection to our shared history, serving as physical representations of the immigrant struggle to gain a foothold. These photographs—many never before seen, others having originally appeared in. The Power Broker by Robert Caro“My favorite book about NYC is The Power Broker by Robert Caro. White took a stroll through Manhattan and wrote one of the most quintessential love letters to New York. It's also a love letter to the city of the era, as Smith's exploits take her from Scribner's Book Store to the Chelsea Hotel to Coney Island to the sweaty heart of Max's Kansas City and CBGB's. Toni Morrison composes a riveting, immersive work in this story of 1920s Harlem. 38. Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul by Jeremiah Moss“We all have our own lost city. Forgotten New York by Kevin Walsh“Walsh's book came out right around the time I was moving to NYC, and I used it as a sort of field guide to looking for bits of history around various NYC neighborhoods. Though a yearlong convalescence in a Connecticut hospital as a child damaged his connection to his Cuban community of Morningside Heights, he sought to regain his sense of identity through writing, eventually publishing the bestselling novel, While you may know Fitzgerald from reading. The Second World War is in full swing, but so is the comic book craze, and Joe Kavalier—escape artist, magician and artist—and his cousin Sammy Clay are determined to make their mark on the genre. Books for adults Nineteenth century 1800s. An Imaginative and Action-Packed Adventure, Tieghan Gerard's Guide to a Small but Special Meal at Home. If we stick around long enough, we lose the city of our youth, our dreams, and foiled ambitions. Focusing on the period between 1840 and 1919, it’ll take you to a now-unrecognizable New York, pre-Tenement Act, inside the city's overcrowded slums and teeming streets. February 5, 1995 The 10 Best Books About New York By SAM ROBERTS . Low Life by Luc SanteMuch has been said about how New York has lost its grit. Jacquette makes great use of the real estate of the page to make connections between the toy and the city, and the pictures are likely to trigger memories of play on long-demolished playgrounds for children of the 1970s and 1980s.” —Alexandra Lange, Curbed architecture critic. There’s nothing like sinking into a good book. Which is why, even if you're no native, you should pick up one of these quintessential books about New York City: "Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898" by Edwin G. Burrows New York City wasn't always a simultaneously dingy and glittering representation of The American Dream. Robinson is an outstanding writer who mixes theory and science fiction. 9. Perhaps no author has better encapsulated the sense of New York as a place of personal reinvention, for better and worse. When his next assignment is to spy on a Korean-American politician, he comes face to face with his various identities, and must reconcile them in order to move forward. New York History Books Showing 1-50 of 535 Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Paperback) by. 20. Here Is New York by E.B. There's a pervasive sense of motion and complexity as Lionel ping-pongs through Brooklyn's mob scene in pursuit of a murderer—or as one character puts it, "wheels within wheels. By clicking Sign Up, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. He is of Korean descent, but he grew up in New York. The setting is a major part of what has made E.L. Konigsburg's 1967 children's mystery an enduring classic, and From the Mixed-Up Files continues to inspire generations of kids to take more than a passing interest in museums and art history—even if they don't get to splash around in the fountain. If you buy something from a Curbed link, Vox Media may earn a commission. Harriet the Spy by Louise FitzhughThe 1960s was a particularly rich era for stories of precocious kids navigating Gotham. The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto“New Yorkers tend to think the city sprang fully formed out of the past, a triumph of development by British colonists, but the Dutch were here for over a century before the English gave them the book. Though perhaps one of DeLillo’s lesser-known novels. The Times’s staff critics talk with one another about the reading they did in 2020, on and off the job. Blood is thicker than water, after all. Beginning life in the Bronx, she grew to depend on herself when she was diagnosed with childhood diabetes. Interspersed with photographs and eloquently written. It changed how I understand the city.” —David Rockwell, founder and president, Rockwell Group. Working in Brooklyn as hired help for gangster Frank Minna, Tourette’s-suffering orphan, Lionel Essrog has a challenging life. One of my favorite quotes in the book is about our neighborhoods: ‘Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.’” —Mark Gardner, principal, Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects, 36. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs“Apart from being astute and full of implications about human nature as well as urban planning, her analysis evokes the city like almost no other book—in part because Jacobs conjures up not just the New York of a particular era but the vital something that is constant, that accounts for so much of the city’s pull, generation after generation. Just Kids by Patti SmithPunk-poet legend Patti Smith chronicles her early years in the New York of the 1960s and ’70s in this 2010 memoir. Everyone has a different take on this bustling, diverse city. In his 2000 Pulitzer-winning novel, Michael Chabon tells the story of two Jewish kids—one from Brooklyn, one a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague—who dream up a Superman-esque hero and rise to fame during the Golden Age of comics. Get to know it a little better by taking one of these books out on the town. James Baldwin’s first major novel chronicles a single day in a sweeping, thought-provoking self-reflection of fourteen-year-old John Grimes. Looking back on her life, Allison begins this story in 1980s New York: a time of glitz, glamour, and shoulder pads. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler"Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning," announced Howard Cosell during the 1977 World Series, and thrust the crime wave eviscerating New York City’s northernmost borough into the international spotlight. Catherine must navigate her world carefully, as the New York societal fetters can be binding. The curious, inquisitive (maybe too inquisitive) Harriet is the perfect avatar for every city dweller who's fascinated by the passing lives of others. By pointing out buildings, lesser known landmarks and remnants of early NYC, Walsh gives the reader a new way to see every day things we walk past on the way to the subway. New York City: The Big Apple, The Center of the Universe, the City of Dreams, the City That Never Sleeps, the City So Nice, They Named it Twice (and more). It’s about how the city has been taken from us. Dominique Ansel tells us just how the famous cronut came to be, while Eddie Schoenfeld gives his account of growing from a young Jewish boy to one of New York’s top Chinese food experts. Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Oscar Hijuelos, opens his life up to readers in this witty, entertaining memoir. 32. Posted By: Walter Godinez on: July 12, 2012 In: Opinions. 8. Mario Puzo’s classic tale of New York City’s Mafia underworld is thrilling, bloody, and engrossing. Shorto’s book paints a vivid picture of a colony on the tip of Manhattan far more vibrant than most history textbooks allow and provides a glimpse into the origins of a Europeanized New York often glossed over.” —Ben Kabak, blogger, Second Ave Sagas. It's as much a memoir of Kazin as it is of Brownsville and New York City as a whole.” —Nadine Maleh, executive director, Institute for Public Architecture, 37. Descent, but a brilliant American work of art 1889 ) 1890s s hulking 2016 book lets us.! 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