Reviews for The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction

The average rating for The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-14 00:00:00 Andy Williams [3.5 stars] As a native New Yorker and NYC history buff, I enjoyed this chronicle of popular culture's persistent death-wish fantasies of New York's destruction, by monsters, climate change, nuclear war, fires, floods and arch-villains' evil plots. Rose demonstrates the continuity of the theme (briefly interrupted by the shock of 9/11, but quickly resumed); however 80% of the material he employs is second-tier: pulp fiction, comics, and B (or worse) movies. This book has certainly got me tracking down some of the cheesy sci-fi movies he cites and turned me on to my current read, Paul Auster's "Country Of Last Things", which I am loving. But many of the titles talked about at length are probably justly forgotten. This is a fun diversion for pop-culture and New-Yorkiana geeks, and I'd recommend it to that crowd.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-11-16 00:00:00 Val Esparza An broad, but not terribly deep, analysis of a fascinating subject. Nice to see "Soylent Green" getting the academic treatment though.