Book Time #12: NYC Starter Pack
Hey everyone,
After talking about it for almost a year, it is finally here: The NYC Starter Pack!
This is a special edition of Book Time for me personally. Being a New Yorker has gradually seeped into my identity to the point where I must reluctantly admit I am one. I never intended to be a New Yorker, but I’ve lived here for a third of my life and keep getting deeper into it.
I hate so much about this city. New York is life on Hard Mode unless you’re wealthy enough to buy your way out of the inconveniences. I am not. I sometimes swear I will leave just as soon as I can. And yet, I’m still here. So I read about New York for the same reason I read about anything else, to satisfy a curiosity. Why, I want to know, do I love this place that I hate so much?
Thanks as always for reading.
First, some disclaimers. This is a starter pack to help people interested in reading great books about New York City. I have curated it with the intention of providing an overview. It is not a list of the “best” books about NYC, a ranking of quality, or a Top Ten-type list.
This Starter Pack is organized by tiers. The tiers are in descending order of recommendation, but the books within tiers are not in any specific order. I put it together with an eye towards someone working their way down the list while gaining an ever-expanding view of this wonderful, infuriating city.
I read about 25 titles for this guide and considered dozens more which I either didn’t finish or didn’t end up reading for one reason or another. In addition to all the obvious attributes for recommending a good book, I also considered availability. Books that were hard to find are generally not included.
Obviously, this is just a tiny fraction of books written about NYC. My hope is it makes it easy for people to start their own NYC reading journey. Then you can write in and tell me about what books aren’t on the list that you think should be.
Tier 1
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Lucy Sante
Although Low Life covers the late 19th and early 20th Century Manhattan, it is the book that best captures what it feels like to live in New York, its energy and chaos and constant change. It also features what I believe to be the best two-sentence description of New York ever written:
It is a city and it is also a creature, a mentality, a disease, a threat, an electromagnet, a cheap stage set, an accident corridor. It is an implausible character, a monstrous vortex of contradictions, an attraction-repulsion mechanism so extreme no one could have made it up.
Low Life was one of the first books I ever read about NYC and still one of my favorites. Sante harbors great disdain for nostalgia while also respecting the pull our past has on us. Like any great book about New York, it convinces you to both love it and loathe it more than you already did.
Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, Kim Philips-Fein
The New York City fiscal crisis of the 1970s is one of the most important events in American history. Every time I read about it I am overwhelmed by its significance. You simply cannot understand postwar America, much less New York City, without a basic understanding of the dynamics, power plays, causes and consequences of the NYC fiscal crisis. It was a fork in this country’s road, and the powers that be picked up that fork and stabbed the city with it.
Kim Philips-Fein’s brilliant Fear City is not only a towering scholarly work but entertaining and a reasonably-sized volume. Reading Fear City is a very different experience than reading Low Life, which is why I think they make such a perfect pair.
Tier 2
The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York, Suleiman Osman
I strongly considered this for Tier 1, but ended up bumping it down because it doesn’t quite have the breadth that would make it appealing to everyone. It is mostly about housing and urbanist issues. That said, for anyone interested in those things, I cannot recommend Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn more highly. It is a nuanced, historical approach situating early Brooklyn gentrifiers and their idiosyncratic political and social mindsets. For me, it has been the single most influential book I’ve read on NIMBYism, neighborhood control, and the hyper-local forces that stymie effective government today.
The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City—and Determined the Future of Cities, Joe Flood
A bafflingly under-appreciated work, The Fires’ biggest flaw is its ridiculous subtitle. I struggled with whether The Fires or Fear City—both about NYC in the 1970s—ought to be in Tier 1. Ultimately I went with Fear City because it is a better overview of the times. But let that take nothing away from The Fires, an excellent companion read with Fear City. It is about how New York City tried to solve its fire crisis with fancy computer models and consultants while slashing firefighting budgets and closing firehouses around the city. It worked as well as you’d think.
My theory on why The Fires is so under-appreciated is because, like so many under-appreciated works, it suffered from bad timing. Released in 2011, one of the trendiest ideas at the time was the power of “Big Data.” Not coincidentally, that same year the Moneyball movie hit theaters. Nobody wanted to hear about the failures and limitations of big data, but that’s exactly what The Fires was about. No amount of data or rich white guys staring at spreadsheets can replace adequate resources, proper funding of essential services, and basic common sense.
The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, Charles Kaiser
One of the least NYC books on this list, I’m including it nonetheless because, firstly, it is still largely about NYC, and, second, I wanted a book about how an oppressed underclass found some form of community and acceptance in NYC. The Gay Metropolis is not only about that but also an excellent literary work. You can read my full review of The Gay Metropolis here.
St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America's Hippest Street, Ada Calhoun
I am highlighting St. Marks Is Dead primarily because it is a How To Guide on not sounding like a fool when talking about New York. You can read my full review here.
Tier 3
Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, Will Hermes
One of the many regrets I have about this list is it should have more books about art and culture. But Love Goes has earned its spot here. Again, a 1970s book, but, again, no apologies for that, as it’s the 1970s world and we’re just living in it. You can read my full review of Love Goes here.
City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York, Jack Newfield and Wayne Barrett
and/or
The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York, Jack Newfield, Paul DuBrul
The news industry is such a key part of NYC history. And such a key part of the NYC news industry has been its particular firebrand of investigative reporters. Newfield and Barrett are two titans of the field. Either of these books about how much Ed Koch and the 1980s sucked for this city will be more than worth your time. The only downside is they aren’t the easiest to find, but there are generally used copies floating around to be had for affordable prices.
In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime, Michael Flamm
For American cities, the 1960s was a decade defined by urban race riots and rebellions. The first major one occurred in New York City in 1964 after a cop shot a black kid under disputed circumstances. Flamm’s forensic account of what exactly happened, how the riots started, and how the police reacted is a seminal work in the field of understanding the 1960s, and therefore understanding the backlash that occurred to them which defined American urban policy for decades to come.
On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City, Evan Friss
A breezy book, much like a slow ride along the Hudson River Greenway on a sunny winter afternoon. I don’t have enough books on this list about NYC as a fun place, but this is one of them.
722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York, Clifton Hood
No list about NYC books is complete without a book about the subway. Unfortunately, there aren’t many truly great books about the modern subway. 722 Miles is the definitive work on the construction of the subways, but that essentially stopped before World War II. You won’t find any insight into the subway since the 1960s because it is outside the scope of the book. It is also a bit dry, at least compared to many other titles on here. Still, there’s a lot of worthwhile insight into how NYC once built things and how the subway fundamentally changed the city’s geography.
Working Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II, Joshua Freeman
This is a dense work, but a necessary one. Most accounts of the New York City fiscal crisis of the 1970s begin, more or less, with the crisis itself. We learn the city was broke. The same examples come up over and over: Free CUNY, decent-to-good wages and pension benefits for municipal workers, cheap subway fares. What so few of these accounts do is provide, in any real detail beyond these token examples, what New York City’s fiscal “sins” really were, and what kind of life they made for the city’s working class. Freeman’s book corrects this. If you can stomach a more academic treatment, this is a worthy read.
Tier 4
These are books I feel compelled to mention for one reason or another but I don’t necessarily recommend for the starter pack.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro
I am not going to recommend a 1,200 page book for a starter pack, but if you want to read it by all means go right ahead.
Gotham/Greater Gotham, Mike Wallace & Edwin Burrows
See above, but replace “1,200” with “2,000.”
The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City, William Helmreich
I didn’t like this book as much as a lot of other people did, but it is certainly not a bad book by any means. I just didn’t take much away from it other than New York City is a land of contrasts.
Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, David Oshinsky
A perfectly fine book but hardly about New York City despite the title, more of a history of medicine than NYC or Bellevue. You can read my full review here.
The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld, Herbert Asbury
A classic of NYC lore but Low Life is the far superior work covering similar ground. You can read my full review here.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, Jonathan Mahler
This book had its 15 minutes of fame but it hasn’t aged well. The narratives of urban “unrest” are too reliant on police sources. The political and cultural threads weaved in between the baseball feels short-changed and incomplete. At the time there weren’t many books on New York City in the 70s but with Fear City, The Fires, and other, more complete books about Reggie Jackson there is no reason to read this anymore.
Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York, Craig Castleman
I loved this book but it can be hard to find and the subject matter is admittedly narrow. I also have enough books about the 1970s/80s as it is. However if you’re interested in the graffiti craze of the 70s/80s, how the kids actually went about tagging the trains, and want a much more nuanced and enlightened view of this issue, I heartily recommend Getting Up. You can read my full review here.
The Great School Wars: A History of the New York City Public Schools, Diane Ravitch
There are generally two ways authors approach institutional histories: using the institution as a case study for other, similar institutions, or using the institution as a microcosm of the place in which it exists. While I greatly admired this book and took a lot away from it, The Great School Wars is a book interested in school policy more than NYC. This doesn’t make it a bad book by any means—I highly recommend it—but not a read for the NYC starter pack, specifically.