97 books like New York Recentered

I am definitely recommending some very big books here! 

This one is easily recognizable because of the size of its spine, but it’s also incredibly interesting – an economic, social, and political history of New York City from its founding to consolidation, I think the best thing about this book is all the subjects it covers which I knew nothing about. 

New York City during the American Revolution comes to mind. So does the early history of New York’s apartment buildings. There’s a reason this book won a Pulitzer Prize. 

I like the sequel too (called Greater Gotham, only by Wallace), but prefer this book, I think, because I know the post-1898 history better while much of this book was novel to me.

Every biographer must do battle with Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, a monumental account of urban planner Robert Moses, whose God-like power redesigning postwar New York City effectively remade the capital of the twentieth century. Over the course of 1,336 pages, Caro details Moses’s world-making vision while also acknowledging problematic issues, such as Moses’s reported use of racial slurs and his remapping of roads and overpasses to exclude poorer communities.

Today, half a century since its first publication, The Power Broker remains one of the greatest English-language biographies. It's also a landmark in showing how world-historical change can begin with aesthetic power. Like all foundational texts, its comprehensive documenting of both the ambitions and the prejudices of that era also lays a path for future insight. In gesturing toward Moses’s faults, this magisterial work also leaves room for subsequent generations to re-examine the problems of the past. 

Joseph Mitchell was the city reporter for the New Yorker for about half a century. This is a collection of his magazine stories. Many of them involve the old Fulton Fish Market, but he also wrote about weird things like dime museums, gypsies, and stag banquets. 

To me, every story in this collection is like a time capsule. This is the book that made me want to write about New York City because it suggests there is a history on every block there worth recording. If you don’t like a chapter or two, then skip to the next one, but I’ll vouch for 80% of this book being the best non-fiction writing that I have ever read (and I practically read for a living).

Yes, you want to read a history of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s not just fascinating, it is genuinely exciting. 

McCullough is best known for his presidential biographies, but I find this work much more interesting because the subject is so unpredictable, the protagonists (the Roeblings) are such tragic figures and the bridge itself is so unique. The Brooklyn Bridge is very close to where the Fulton Fish Market was so I got to write about the way that the bridge affected the flow of traffic through the city. 

This is a different story because it centers more on the people than on commerce and because unlike the Fulton Fish Market, the bridge is still there.

From 2000 to 2001, I worked two blocks south of the Twin Towers. During my lunch breaks, I would grab take-out lunches and sit in the plaza of the World Trade Center, with the towers keeping me company. When completed, the Twin Towers generated immense controversy because they were “slum clearance” projects, and a government agency was erecting record-breaking buildings to compete with the private sector.

Gillespie’s book chronicles the creation of the Twin Towers and how the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a port and transportation agency, suddenly found itself as a real estate titan. The book captures a moment in post-World War II New York that will likely never be replicated. It remains a key history in our post-9/11 world.

David Owen cares about cities and climate change, but the solution he suggests may seem counter-intuitive. At least it seemed so to me, until I began to look around at my own relatively sustainable city, Montreal. Owen argues that dense cities are really more environmentally friendly than spread out ones, and if we're going to get a handle on carbon emissions we are going to have to live closer together.  He doesn't advocate high rises all over as Le Corbusiier would, but a mixture of housing heights tied to effective public transportation. He presents workable ideas that can change the world. 

Having worked for a jewelry designer in the Washington, DC area, The Gem Thief caught my eye. The story took me back to my days in the shop (good memories!), and the author has obviously done her research, because her accuracy is impeccable. I liked all of the characters, but I bonded with one of the secondary characters so much that I felt we could be friends in “real life.” I’ve been to New York City often, so I also enjoyed revisiting the city. The book was both comfortable because of all the associations to “past lives,” and exciting as I turned pages wondering what would happen next.

Understanding New York Jews is key to understanding American Jews. There is no city like New York City and there are no Jews like New York Jews. In the middle of the 20th century, they made up around 30% of the total city population. This three-volume award-winning set uncovers aspects of the city’s history that even aficionados don’t know. Each volume can be purchased separately but together they paint an absorbing panorama across four centuries. I like to teach the volumes. They are fresh each time I read them, with lively prose and compelling vignettes. Reading them is like walking the streets of Gotham with a great guide.

“I saw a little boy on the street today, and he cried so eloquently that I will never forget him.” Maeve Brennan wrote for the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section as ‘The Long-Winded Lady’ from 1954 to 1968. She roamed the city’s streets, bars, and restaurants, eyes wide open, weaving stories of vivid emotional detail from the most seemingly mundane moments. None of these are too long – in the waiting room concentration can be fleeting – but each sketch engages. Her story of the crying boy ends this way: “He might have been the last bird in the world, except that if he had been the last bird there would have been no one to hear him.”

Zabar's, New York's world-famous food emporium, is the achievement of another Jewish immigrant family.

Author Lori Zabar's grandparents, before they were a couple, fled pogroms in Russia (now Ukraine) and made their way to New York. Together they worked at a variety of small food stores before starting their own in 1934. From then on, Zabar's helped define the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The story here is one of hard work and eventual success in a family-run business, expanded to include dedicated non-family employees. The book also contains recipes, including two of my personal favorites - latkes and kugel.