Recently I found myself attracted by the history of New York City, will anyone list some books about it 😕
Thank you very much.

11 comments

  1. History of what?

    Music? Architecture? Celebrities? Food? Immigration trends?

    r/AskNYC

  2. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York is often recommended as he’s the guy who tore through what was left of 19th century NY and paved it over with expressways. It was released in ‘74 and Moses died in ‘81 but the effects are still all too apparent to modern city living

  3. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky is weirdly good

  5. *Love –> Buildings On Fire: Five Years In New York That Changed Music Forever*, by Will Hermes, which is about NYC music scenes from 1973 to 1977. This is the time and place new wave, hip hop, punk, disco, and lots more were either invented or perfected. The author goes beyond the music and talks about other things that happened during this time, such as the 1977 blackout, Son of Sam murders, opening of the World Trade Center, and more.

    *Going Into Town* by Roz Chast, who is mostly known as a cartoonist for the *New Yorker* magazine. Just a funny book (graphic novel?) about the quirks of growing up and living in New York.

  6. *A Tree Grows In Brooklyn*- this is a really beautiful classic novel. It’s technically fiction, but it is heavily based on the author’s actual life growing up in early 20th century Brooklyn. She also takes you to early 1900s Manhattan.

    There’s a timelessness to it, given that there are almost certainly families like the Nolans still living in NYC, they just might speak Spanish or Chinese now.

  7. Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants – Robert Sullivan

  9. “The Poisoner’s Handbook” by Deborah Blum — it’s largely about the early history of forensic science, but talks a lot about life (and death) in New York during prohibition 🙂

  10. Gotham and its sequel, Greater Gotham, form the most comprehensive history I know of. They cover pretty much everything up to 1919. There’s also the Historical Atlas of New York City, which is awesome if you like maps, but there’s lots of other stuff besides maps in it as well.

    If you want to go in depth on some really specific areas of NYC history, two more books I like are City On a Grid by Gerard Koeppel and On Bicycles by Evan Friss.

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