Reporting on New York City: NYC Books

An essential reference for everyone with an interest in architecture and those who simply want to know more about New York City. First published in 1968, the AIA Guide to New York City has long been the definitive guide to the city's built environment.

An updated, expanded edition of the most comprehensive one-volume reference work on New York City ever compiled. A great starting place for New York City research on neighborhoods, historical events, and more.

A visual guide to the history of New York, taking us, neighborhood by neighborhood, through 400 years of Gotham's rich past.

Originally published in 1939, this is a reissued guide for time-travelers. It offers New York-lovers and 1930s-buffs a look at life as it was lived in the days when a trolley ride cost only a few cents, a room at the Plaza was $7.50, Dodger fans flocked to Ebbetts Field, and the new World's Fair was the talk of the town.

Featuring more than 200 striking photographs, rare documents, and vintage illustrations from the Schomburg's world-famous collection, The Black New Yorkers offers an unparalleled view of African American life.

Described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning," Jane Jacobs argues that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners.

When the news broke in 1975 that New York City was on the brink of fiscal collapse, few believed it was possible. How could the country's largest metropolis fail? Historian Kim Phillips-Fein tells the history of New York City on the edge of disaster—and an anatomy of the austerity politics that continue to shape the world today.

A monumental work of history that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, underscoring that the history of New York is the story of our nation.

Mike Wallace captures the swings of prosperity and downturn, from the 1898 skyscraper-driven boom to the Bankers' Panic of 1907, the labor upheaval, and violent repression during and after the First World War. New York was transformed in these two decades as the world's second-largest city and now its financial capital.

A passionate and dramatic account of a year in the life of a city, when baseball and crime reigned supreme, and when several remarkable figures emerged to steer New York clear of one of its most harrowing periods.

By geographically matching an 18th-century map of Manhattan's landscape to the modern cityscape, combing through historical and archaeological records, and applying modern principles of ecology and computer modeling, landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson shows what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago.

In place-names lie stories. Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on the city's map.

Dangerous, filthy, and falling apart—New York's terrifying, if liberating, state of nature in 1978 also made it the capital of American culture. Over the next thirty-plus years, though, it became a different place—kinder and meaner, richer and poorer, more like America and less like what it had always been. Dyja's account of this metamorphosis shows it wasn't the work of a single policy, mastermind, or economic theory, nor was it a morality tale of gentrification or crime.

The companion volume to the PBS television series, with more than 500 full-color and black-and-white illustrations. Chronicling the story of New York from its establishment as a Dutch trading post in 1624 to its global preeminence today, the book an exploration of the myriad forces—commercial, cultural, demographic—that converged in New York to usher in the contemporary world.

An exploration into what America was, is, and can become through the lens of the rapidly changing American metropolis. From its origins as a primitive Dutch outpost to the sprawling urban complex it is today, the defining characteristic of New York has been constant, dramatic, and rapid change.

A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man's incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of 20th century New York. One of the Modern Library's hundred greatest books of the 20th century.

A brief, insightful and lively history of the peoples, events, and interactions that have formed New York City, weaving together the shifting currents of economic, political, social, and cultural life.

With a keen eye for historical detail and a firm grasp of the intricacies of New York City politics, Freeman shows how the anti-communist purges of the 1950s decimated the ranks of the labor movement and demoralized its idealism, and how the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s dealt a crushing blow to liberal ideals as the city's wealthy elite made an audacious grab for power.

When it first opened on October 27, 1904, the New York City subway ran 22 miles from City Hall to 145th Street and Lenox Avenue—the longest stretch ever built at one time. From that initial route, the subway grew to cover 722 miles. In this definitive history, Hood traces the complex and fascinating story of the New York City subway system.

A richly illustrated history of below-market housing in New York, from the 1920s to today. The book examines the people, places, and policies that have helped make New York livable, from early experiments by housing reformers and the innovative public-private solutions of the 1970s and 1980s to today's professionalized affordable housing industry.

In 1965, Co-op City was planned as the largest middle-class housing development in the United States. Sammartino tells the story of Co-Op City from the perspectives of those who built it and of the ordinary people who made their homes in this monument to imperfect liberal ideals of economic and social justice.

Since its emergence in the mid-19th century as the nation's "metropolis," New York has faced the most challenging housing problems of any American city, but it has also led the nation in innovation and reform. A standard in the field since its publication in 1992, this revised edition extends the scope of the book into the city's recent history.

Longtime residents of two social housing co-ops in Brooklyn and Manhattan, St. James Towers and Southbridge Towers, lock horns over whether to maintain the rules that have kept their homes affordable for decades or to cash out at great personal profit. Tarleton lays bare competing visions of what ownership means, what homes are for, and what neighbors owe each other.

America's largest city generates garbage in torrents but New Yorkers don't give it much attention. In Picking Up, anthropologist Robin Nagle introduces us to the men and women of New York City's Department of Sanitation and makes clear why this small army of uniformed workers is the most important labor force on the streets.

When it comes to large-scale public housing in the United States, the consensus for the past decades has been to let the wrecking balls fly. Yet one notable exception remains: The New York City Housing Authority, America's largest public housing manager. By focusing on what worked, rather than on the conventional history of failure and blame, Bloom provides useful models for addressing the current crisis in affordable urban housing.

Have you ever wondered how the water in your faucet gets there? Where your garbage goes? How bananas from Ecuador get to your local market? Using New York City as its point of reference, The Works takes readers down manholes and behind the scenes to explain exactly how an urban infrastructure operates.

A masterful evocation of the city that never sleeps, The Colossus of New York captures the city's inner and outer landscapes in a series of vignettes, meditations, and personal memories.

This major anthology brings together not only the best literary writing about New York—from O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Paul Auster, and James Baldwin, among many others—but also the most revealing essays by politicians, philosophers, city planners, social critics, visitors, immigrants, journalists, and historians.

Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E.B. White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. The New York Times has named Here is New York one of the ten best books ever written about the metropolis.

From the co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance is this portrait of contemporary New York City through six speakers of little-known and overlooked languages, diving into the history of the most linguistically diverse place ever to have existed on the planet.

A now-classic portrait of the underside of America's greatest city, Low Life tells the true story of the growth of Manhattan—not the familiar saga of mansions, avenues and robber barons, but the turbulent, often murderous story of the city's slums.

Nonstop Metropolis, the culminating volume in a trilogy of atlases, conveys innumerable unbound experiences of New York City through 26 imaginative maps and informative essays.

This anthology features in-depth portraits of diverse ethnic populations, revealing the surprising new realities of immigrant life in 21st century New York City. Contributors show how nearly 50 years of massive inflows have transformed New York City's economic and cultural life and how the city has changed the lives of immigrant newcomers.