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Gotham Gazette's NYC Books: Library Pick
Classics, favorites, and old stand-bys

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Colossus Of New York: A City In 13 Parts
by Colson Whitehead
(Doubleday, 2003. 176 pp. $19.95 )
In a form that has been compared to the EB White classic Here Is New York, Colossus of New York sets out to capture the city's essence in a short, non-narrative essay.



Celluloid Skyline: New York and The Movies
by James Sanders
(Knopf, . 498 pp. $45 )
"New York and the movies seem made for each other," James Sanders writes in Celluloid Skyline. "Like New York, film is big. Like New York, film is larger than life. And like New York, it embodies -- even defines -- qualities of romance, glamour, danger, adventure."



Intuitionist
by Colson Whitehead
(Knopf Publishing Group, 2000. 272 pp. $12.95 )
Without mentioning the city's name, Colson Whitehead's novel the Intuitionist describes New York through some of its finer attributes – corrupt unions, inefficient bureaucracy, racial tension, and elevator crashes.



Fury
by Salman Rushdie
(Modern Library, 2001.)
An immigrant's tale, Fury is set in New York City, depicting the culture of wealth, ambition and promise, as well as of rage and violence, that the 'Golden Age' of the late 1990s brought to the city.



New York Glory: Religions In the City
by Tony Carnes, Anna Karpathakis (Editors)
(New York University Press, 20000801. 400 pp. $20 )
A collection of two dozen essays, bringing together some of the most significant research on religion in the city. The contributors represent various academic and advocacy projects like the City University of New York's analysis of religion among Latinos, the American Jewish Committee, Queens College's Asian religion studies, and the Religion and Immigrant Incorporation project at New School University.



Grand Central Winter
by Lee Stringer
(Simon & Schuster, . 256 pp. $12.95 )
Lee Stringer was introduced to crack cocaine by a casual acquaintance late one night in 1984. Late on another night nine months later, he was awoken by a housing marshal and evicted from his Upper East Side apartment; he hadn't paid rent for over three months. For years following his eviction, Stringer lived on the streets of New York City.



Motherless Brooklyn
by Jonathan Lethem
(Vintage, October 2000.)
From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel. Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.



Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
by Luc Sante
(Vintage Books, 1991.)
Anecdotal history of the New York underworld from around 1840 to 1919. Runs the gamut from youth gangs to prostitutes to corrupt political bosses.



1876
by Gore Vidal
(Vintage Books, 2000. 384 pp.)
Through the eyes of Schuyler, Vidal takes the reader through the political high society of the day, painting a picture of an elite, and indeed a society, so devoted to the capture of wealth that principles have been wantonly (indeed, proudly) discarded. The culmination is the corrupt election of 1876, the result of which is disputed until March 1877 (ring any bells?).

Democracy is seen not to be working for the benefit of all - Vidal paints a frightening picture of the New York underworld, replete with beggars, violence and prostitution, the latter of which the hypocritical male upper classes frequent regularly.(MR G RODGERS from amazon.com)



The Bridge
by Gay Talese
(Walker and Company, 2003. 176 pp.)
Widely praised after its 1964 release, The Bridge, about the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, fell out of print for more than 20 years. In 2003, it was republished as a paperback, with a new afterword by Talese. For the lengthy afterword, Talese attempted to contact and revisit many of the people he met in the sixties.


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