How the Other Half Lives (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Book

Had to up this rating because this book's vividness makes me SEE and SMELL and HEAR the New York City of more than 100 years ago, and because, imperfect though the book is, it is a very compelling, informative and important social document; a classic of its type and subject. (Final comments and observations at bottom of review).

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A famous early cry for reform, from the earliest days of the muckrakers, Riis' investigation of the slums of New York from 1890 has been featured in so many documentaries (nicely in Ric Burns' fantastic PBS documentary series, "New York: A Documentary Film") and referenced in so many books and yet, for some reason, despite a desire to track this down and read it I never actively did so until now. The whole thing is available online at

I've started reading, and it's a fascinating vision of squalor, but equally interesting for the patronizing tone of Riis himself; who seems to be equally aghast at landlords and tenants, the latter for their slatternly immorality or some such.
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Riis' overall sense of wrongness trumps his casual and typical-of-the-age racism; maybe because of this he is better at describing physical horrors (his sense of the ebb and flow of the city; the physical ghosts of its past encroaching on the present and the "feeling" for what the slums look like) than he is at really conveying the human consequences. He seems to look down upon the people he talks about as akin to scurrying insects. Whenever he doesn't understand something of another culture, he simply refers to it as "odd," rather than realize that it's just different from what he knows. He never seems to want to talk to the people he writes about.

I'm not always sure if Riis is offended by the injustice of the slums on its dwellers or -- like a neighbor who keeps his yard impeccably clean and trimmed -- he is simply aghast at the messy ways of the folks across the street.

The condescending tone notwithstanding, the book is vivid in its scene painting. The sense of life in the streets and the alleys and the hovels is palpable; you can smell the stench; one thinks of Bosch and Hogarth. There's also a sardonic edge in Riis' voice, even when he appears to be racist; he seems to insult an entire race of people but at the same time seems to compliment them, or at least suggest that everyone is corruptible, which is a great equalizer of humanity.

In the end the book turns out to be something that Riis did not intend: an inadvertent study of him, or, a socio-cultural study of how his own dominant cultural assumptions color his perceptions. We are studying him studying others. Interestingly we do so with our own colorations. It is easy to forget that some of what Riis says here is not necessarily wrong. It's when he extrapolates great evils from individual behaviors that we find him on rocky ground.

The way he talks about the Chinese, for example, he might as well be describing alien life forms; so contemptuous is he. Lest we doubt him, he makes sure to bring forth a "Chinaman" beating his wife, which makes him hard to dispute. A cheap type trope, but one still commonly used today to demonize whole peoples in the name of something or another righteous ("freedom", national security, etc.)

Many readers today run the risk of missing the enlightening qualities of this tome by choosing to be offended. There's much here to be gleaned about the teller and the tale; all of it fascinating and worthy of consideration. Ironically, Riis' sense of superiority and his now "un-PC" views make his descriptions of the teeming hives fearless. His description of the Tenth Ward ("Jewtown") is as masterly and photogenic as his cultural view of the Jews is offensive. By contrast, his portrait of the "negro" is downright glowing and sympathetic.

In any case, this might not meet the standards of a "study," but it is quite a book, and a compelling read.

A few additional thoughts: I've resumed reading this again after a hiatus. The sections on the fates of children in the slums are harrowing. The "baby farms", where unwanted babies are taken in for a small fee to be slowly starved to death and fed drugs to keep quiet while they slowly die (a corrupt coroner signs the death certificate to certify an innocuous cause of death) is hardcore. Those interested in the origins of American gangsterism will find the chapter on the early youth gangs of New York fascinating. It was a short hop from there to the Mafia, and nothing really changed, from the "protection rackets" to the endemic corruption of the police and the system where the prevalent tavern was the conduit for all exchanges. Only the slang and the clothes were different. In these chapters, Riis is at his least culturally judgmental.

Overall, I am recommending this highly.