Taming Manhattan

By Catherine McNeur,

Book cover of Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City

Book description

George Perkins Marsh Prize, American Society for Environmental History
VSNY Book Award, New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America
Hornblower Award for a First Book, New York Society Library
James Broussard Best First Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

With pigs roaming the…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Why read it?

1 author picked Taming Manhattan as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book revealed a pastoral Manhattan few of us could imagine, including feral pigs that roamed the streets, and horses that transported everything and everyone around town. Set in the transformative 1800s when New York City underwent unprecedented urbanization, this book shows how farmers and other New Yorkers who worked the land were ultimately squeezed from Manhattan for more profitable tenants, and how Central Park, and other open spaces, sought to replicate all that recently displaced nature.   

Want books like Taming Manhattan?

Our community of 11,000+ authors has personally recommended 85 books like Taming Manhattan.

Browse books like Taming Manhattan

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Manhattan, New York State, and urbanization?

Manhattan 135 books
New York State 556 books
Urbanization 13 books