Reviews for New York City A Short History

The average rating for New York City A Short History based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-12-05 00:00:00 Jeff Williams It is a short history. Minus back matter (index, bibliography, mayor lists, and a population table) and two prefaces it is 257 pages long. That makes it handy, generally concise, and given to a formulaic constructions—the ebb and flood of Tammany Hall, successions of mayors, litanies of population growth and demographic shifts, recurring problems, mostly financial and housing, and manufacturing, geographic and architectural expansion until it peaks and stops in the 1960 and 70s. Such a short survey of such a big place with hundreds of years of history doesn’t have much of a chance of building a sustained, let alone, compelling narrative. It’s informative, occasionally adorned with a telling detail or two or a character (Fernando Wood, Boss Tweed, LaGuardia, Koch, Giuliani) who sticks around long enough to appear in more than a single paragraph, but very summative and generalized. A good starting place and a quick read, this slender volume may whet your appetite for fuller or juicier, more focused ones but it won’t satisfy it.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-07-24 00:00:00 Giovanna Gliner a summary, focusing on city politics, with occasional statistics and some photos. i enjoyed how it connected some of the sparse dots of my existing knowledge of a place where i had once lived. perhaps squeezing 400 years of one of the world's largest and most influential cities into 250 pages made this inevitable, but it often felt unsatisfying. the tome was pedestrian about somewhere that feels anything but that and surely also did in the past. but i will keep it as a backgrounder while looking for books that better capture the city's drama.