From Publishers Weekly
Jackson, editor of the celebrated Encyclopedia of New York City, and Dunbar, founder of the CITYterm program (an academic program for high school students), embrace an enormous range of writing about Gotham in this historical anthology. If the tension between commerce and culture is not unique to New York, the editors state at the outset, the city's special role is to test the tension between assimilation and diversity, not to mention that between public and private. Their annotations find these and other themes in a grand variety of writings, from an account of Henry Hudson's voyage in 1611 to one of the September 11 terrorist attacks by John P. Avlon, former chief speechwriter and deputy communications director to Mayor Giuliani; Avlon was responsible for writing more than 400 eulogies for city workers. Aside from many familiar names, like Poe, Alger, Wharton, Kazin, Kempton and Ozick, this massive selection includes an excerpt from Thomas Mun's England's Treasure by Forraign Trade (1664), an anonymous call to "Get the Mafia and Cops Out of Gay Bars" and, of course, Charles Loring Blaze's "The Street Life of Rats" (1872). The sheer amount of out-of-the-way text and lore among these 158 pieces is worth the price of admission; the city comes alive through the texts it has produced.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Over the course of almost four centuries, the Empire City has been a beacon of freedom and change but also a place of despair and squalor. Seeking to represent the city's diverse past and present, Jackson (history, Columbia; Encyclopedia of New York City) and Dunbar (Masters Sch., Dobbs Ferry, NY) have gathered a rich harvest of wide-ranging writings about New York City through the centuries, from Dutch rule to our own post-9/11 world. Beginning with Henry Hudson's account of his 1609 voyage of the Upper Bay of the river that bears his name, the book proceeds chronologically with writings by literary lights such as Washington Irving and Walt Whitman but also historical accounts of the plans for Central Park in the 1850s, the New York Draft Riots of 1863, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. Also drawing on the city's modern admirers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, Paul Auster, and Jay McInerney, this reader displays a literary and historical reach that is uncommonly broad. Recommended for New York City collections of academic and larger public libraries.Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., New York Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"This volume is an anthology to be savored...Empire City is a treat for anyone who is interested in New York." -- Barbara Blumberg, The Historian


Book Description
This anthology begins with an account of Henry Hudson's voyage in 1609 and ends with an essay by John P. Avlon, former Mayor Rudolph Guiliani's speechwriter, called "The Resilient City," on the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center as observed from City Hall.Included are favorites, such as Washington Irving's A History of New York and Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," as well as lesser-known gems, such as Frederick Law Olmsted's plan for Central Park and Cynthia Ozick's "The Synthetic Sublime" -- an updated answer to E. B. White's classic essay Here Is New York, which is also included.


About the Author
Kenneth T. Jackson is Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University, and president of the New-York Historical Society. He edited the monumental Encyclopedia of New York City and was a prominent contributor to the PBS documentary New York and its companion volume. David S. Dunbar is co-founder and academic dean of CITYterm at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, an interdisciplinary, experience-based semester program that immerses high school students from around the country in the history, literature, and culture of New York City. He lives in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

As perhaps never before in its extraordinary history, New York has captured the American imagination. 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. The anthology begins with an account of Henry Hudson´s voyage in 1609 and ends with an essay written especially for this book by John P. Avlon, former Mayor Rudolph Guiliani´s speechwriter, called "The Resilient City," on the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center as observed from City Hall. The editors have chosen some familiar favorites, such as Washington Irving´s A History of New York and Walt Whitman´s "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," as well as lesser-known literary and historical gems, such as Frederick Law Olmsted´s plan for Central Park and Cynthia Ozick´s "The Synthetic Sublime" -an updated answer to E. B. White´s classic essay Here Is New York, which is also included. The variety and originality of the selections in Empire City offer a captivating account of New York´s growth, and reveal often forgotten aspects of its political, literary, and social history.

SYNOPSIS

This reader provides contemporary literary and historical account of New York City, from its founding as a trading post to just after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Over 100 writings, including works by Herman Melville, Joan Didion, Thomas Wolfe, Walt Whitman, Theodore Dreiser, and Henry Ward Beecher, as well as many lesser-known writers chronicle the historical, cultural, economic, and social history of the growth of the great metropolis. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

The New Yorker

What news from New York?" F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in an imaginary conversation in "My Lost City," a 1936 essay. " 'Stocks go up. A baby murdered a gangster.' 'Nothing more?' " The city, in all its confounding glory, is the subject of Kenneth T. Jackson and David S. Dunbar's anthology, Empire City, which begins with an account of Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage, includes Frederick Law Olmsted's original plan for Central Park, and recounts such forgotten chapters as the 1909 strike of twenty thousand female garment workers. The influx of immigrants to the city changed everything. The Historic Shops and Restaurants of New York, a guide by Ellen Williams and Steve Radlauer, looks at business brainstorms from a century ago. At the end of the nineteenth century, two hairdressers agreed to spruce up the tresses of porcelain beauties with push-broom lashes and rose paint smiles, and soon so much of their business consisted of these miniature makeovers that, in 1900, they renamed their establishment the Doll Hospital.

The city has always had a knack for improvisation. It Happened on Washington Square, Emily Kies Folpe's social history of the Greenwich Village park -- once a potter's field -- explains that the square's Washington Arch was a temporary innovation that persisted: the original, conceived by the architect Stanford White as a parade decoration in 1889, was made of white-painted pine and papier-mâché and was popular enough to soon be replaced by a stone version. (Lauren Porcaro)

Publishers Weekly

Jackson, editor of the celebrated Encyclopedia of New York City, and Dunbar, founder of the CITYterm program (an academic program for high school students), embrace an enormous range of writing about Gotham in this historical anthology. If the tension between commerce and culture is not unique to New York, the editors state at the outset, the city's special role is to test the tension between assimilation and diversity, not to mention that between public and private. Their annotations find these and other themes in a grand variety of writings, from an account of Henry Hudson's voyage in 1611 to one of the September 11 terrorist attacks by John P. Avlon, former chief speechwriter and deputy communications director to Mayor Giuliani; Avlon was responsible for writing more than 400 eulogies for city workers. Aside from many familiar names, like Poe, Alger, Wharton, Kazin, Kempton and Ozick, this massive selection includes an excerpt from Thomas Mun's England's Treasure by Forraign Trade (1664), an anonymous call to "Get the Mafia and Cops Out of Gay Bars" and, of course, Charles Loring Blaze's "The Street Life of Rats" (1872). The sheer amount of out-of-the-way text and lore among these 158 pieces is worth the price of admission; the city comes alive through the texts it has produced. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal