The most recommended books about the Bronx

Will Eisner not only invented the term “Graphic Novel” but he innovated much of the art and craft of comix. He is one of the pioneers whom I have studied to learn how comix work. Contract is also amazing because it deals with Jewish New York of the mid 20th century which is where my parents grew up. I connect to the tales of how to balance being American while celebrating my Jewish heritage, and the many challenges that came with living amongst other cultures in the “Melting Pot."

I listen to a lot of audiobooks these days. Mostly in the background while I'm doing something else. The investment, in terms of time and attention, is low enough that I abandon many halfway through. After a while, they begin to sound the same, but not The Book of Jose.

Undoubtedly, Fat Joe is an icon, largely due to his character and outsized personality. By his own account, he was more like a drug dealer/entrepreneur who found his way into music. He was not afraid to put himself in the right place at the right time. I'm not sure if there's much of an overlap between Fat Joe fans and Audiobook listeners, but there ought to be. He shines as a narrator.

I take much of what Fat Joe says with a grain of salt, but he's undoubtedly the craziest, funniest, most intense character on the stoop. We all… show more.

I liked this novel because it is rough, heartfelt, and engaging. This story is unusual in that the protagonist, Chulito, a 16-year-old Puerto Rican high school dropout, lives in the South Bronx and is in love with his childhood friend Carlos, but with the barrio’s rampant, ongoing homophobia, he attempts to play straight. Chulito is recruited by a local dealer to sell drugs, and though he acts the tough guy, his love for Carlos persists, even though he struggles to keep his true desire secret. Everything changes when Carlos comes home for the summer after his first year of college and Chulito’s life breaks free.

Their love for each other rises above the trove of hostile masculinity surrounding them, bringing vibrancy to their lives. Yet the struggles persist, as Chulito needs to negotiate the options available for a queer high school dropout caught between limited choices. I enjoyed Rice-Gonzalez’s vibrant… show more.

My friend and co-author Aubrey Fox recommended this book to me not long after we met. 

I liked it so much that I think it is actually one of the reasons we became friends in the first place. Tilting at Mils is the story of an innovative effort by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental nonprofit, to create a paper mill in the Bronx in the 1990s. 

The initiative attracted millions of dollars and high-level political support, both in New York City and Washington DC. But the project never happened.

Tilting at Mills is a gripping story of failure, not due to malfeasance or incompetence, but because achieving anything is difficult and lots of things can go wrong, including rotten luck and bad timing. 

Lila tells the story of two WW11 survivor families whose daughters are born on the same day in a Displaced Persons Camp, who immigrate to the United States around the same time, and take apartments in the same building in the South Bronx, New York. The immigrant neighborhood, full of busybody characters, is beautifully rendered. Everyone expects the two girls to be as close as sisters, their lives and fates happily intertwined. However, their growing-up years veer into dangerous territory. While one family manages to establish a home of love and caring, the other morphs into a den of dysfunction and perversion. Upending everyone’s expectations, the two girls embark on a path of jealousy and hatred. As secrets are revealed, their paths diverge, ending in tragedy. The novel is a shattering portrait of how trauma of the Holocaust and inherited trauma passed on to the next generation can destroy lives.

Las Madres is a story that centers around a horrible tragedy and two devastating hurricanes in Puerto Rico. But for me, what it captured so perfectly was the familiar experience of being a part of an impermeable collective, where even the deepest grievances and secrets do not need to be shared to be felt, where love is fierce and unyielding, and where nothing happens without the community being involved.

Photo albums of my early childhood are filled with photos of me and a sea of cousins, mostly at the beach where I grew up. I think our moms took turns keeping an eye on us, but for the most part, I remember running around barefoot, showering en masse, fighting for a fair share of the food on the table – basically one hair-brushing shy of feral. In a community like ours, no one and everyone was keeping an eye on… show more.

Booth is an extraordinary writer and Tyrell is her signature story. Tyrell is a young man living under incredible pressure with a family that needs him to have both feet on the ground. But he's always on the verge of going the wrong way. Will the need for fast money put him in prison like his father? Booth is in complete command of her characters, story and pacing here. A marvelous book that will make you grateful for your own choices in life.

I was born in the Bronx and lived there with my wife and kids until we moved to the suburbs in my mid-40s. I swam with the carrots in the water at Orchard Beach, roamed the NY Botanical Gardens, went to Yankee games, sang harmony under the El on Allerton Avenue and White Plains Road, and have been a professor at Fordham University since 1998. 

William Helmrecih, who succumbed to COVID-19 in 2020, left us this wonderful walking guide to the Bronx, in which he goes into neighborhoods and side streets and nooks and crannies even I didn’t know about.

Manzano played Maria for more than 40 years on Sesame Street, but this isn’t a book about that show. A sort of next-gen, nonfiction companion to Dominicana, it tells the story of Manzano’s hard-knock childhood in the South Bronx, and how her gifts as an actor and storyteller propelled her out of a rough neighborhood and troubled home (her father physically abused her mother.) Manzano doesn’t paper over the anger she felt and still feels about the systemic forces that ghettoized Hispanic kids like her. But she succeeds in offering hope and modeling Nuyorican success to latter-day versions of her young self.

Fischer’s Miracle Moments in New York Yankees History is aptly divided into five parts, the first of which—“Birth of a Dynasty”—is the most relevant for the current topic. It covers the “Hilltop Highlander” years (1903-1913), the Yankees’ decade at the Polo Grounds as tenants of their arch-rival, the National League’s New York Giants (1913-1922), the sale of the Yankees to Ruppert and Huston (1914-1915), the acquisition of Babe Ruth (1919-1920), and their move to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and their first World Series title (1923). But Fischer’s Miracle Moments has much more to offer than these early days as it provides a panoramic view of the entire Yankees’ franchise from 1903 to the present. 

Few writers inhabit history, distill it, and convey the feeling of an era with the verve or immediacy of E.L. Doctorow.

In Billy Bathgate, he trains his lens on the 1930s and introduces us to Billy Behan, a fatherless Irish-Jewish kid from the Bronx, who has a chance encounter with New York gangster Dutch Schultz and decides “whatever my life was going to be in this world it would have something to do with Mr. Schultz.”

Add a love triangle, a colorful cast of mobsters, murder, blackmail, a special prosecutor, and you have the propulsive plot and rich characters that power this unforgettable novel.   

I loved all of McCaffrey’s The Claire Trilogy books and recommend reading them first, but Finding Jimmy Moran will always occupy a special place in my heart.

McCaffrey is a born storyteller – he pulls you into his world and makes it feel like your own. The book is gritty, hilarious, sometimes gut-wrenching and (while allegedly fiction) it is also one of the most accurate representations of the wild west reckless abandon enjoyed by New York kids growing up in the 1970s and ’80s.

It’s the type of book that makes you want to break out a bottle of good Irish whiskey and read in a single sitting.

There are so many wonderful themes in this book: colonialism, the synchronicity of twins, the ethics of medical care, and the powerful bonds of families created by blood or by choice.

Verghase weaves all of these ideas together in a marvelous tapestry set in the exotic location of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the more familiar locale of New York City. Set against the backdrop of major historical events in Ethiopia, the novel sweeps you into a world where every decision has unexpected consequences.

I absolutely love Hallmark Christmas movies! Much to my husband’s chagrin, I fill up our DVR with Hallmark movies every November and December and never manage to watch them all. Many of those movies have a royal theme with a prince or princess wanting some normalcy and finding love with an American “commoner.” I originally saw this book on a shelf at Barnes & Noble and knew it would be an enjoyable holiday read. The author didn’t disappoint as she spun the tale of a NYC cab driver and his younger sister who cross paths with Princess Marie of Eldovia.  

Kellye Garrett takes the fake world of reality TV, hashtags, and influencers to circle her reluctant protagonist, Lena Scott. Life and actions are judged to only have value if you have video of it to get clicks. That’s the message that stuck with me.

Lena Scott and her sister Desiree may share a father, but they could not be more different. That father is hip-hop mogul Mel Pierce known in the business as Murder Mel. The family members are in and out of each other’s lives with the same kinds of drama a blue-collar family would have; there are just bigger price tags. Lena steps out and opts for a modest life away from the family fortune and her father’s name.

When Desiree suddenly dies as a fallen from grace celebrity who appears to have overdosed, Lena doesn’t buy it. Even two years without speaking doesn’t erase how well she… show more.

Liz Murray’s riveting memoir tells of her unlikely rise from homelessness to being accepted to Harvard. It is another classic triumph over adversity story of someone beating the odds. I picked this book because of my own personal experience with homelessness. During the pandemic, my husband and I walked the deserted New York City streets helping to feed the homeless in our neighborhood. This led to the writing of my third book. Like Westover’s story, my book also tells the story of one woman’s rise from living on the streets of New York City to becoming sheltered, employed, and admitted to college. 

Vibe has been the preeminent publication for hip-hop culture since its inception in 1993. I remember running to the grocery store to pick up each month’s issue and flipping through it’s glossy pages.

The Vibe History of Hip-Hop chronicles the rise of hip-hop from some of the magazine’s sharpest and most esteemed journalists, editors, and photographers. You know the bylines: Danyel Smith, Greg Tate, Anthony deCurtis, dream hampton, Neil Strauss, and Bönz Malone. As Smith writes in the preface: “A history? No. A story, really. A tale from the dark side.”

This is far more than a making of the movie book. The author delves deeply into the backgrounds of those responsible for making the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy and into the sociocultural climate of the times that led to such a groundbreaking film.

Frankel's previous books, The Searchers and High Noon, explored important films in equal depth, but the Midnight Cowboy saga seems to have greater relevance to our time, especially as it relates to LGBTQ people and their lives.

I remember seeing Midnight Cowboy in college in 1971 and wasn't sure how to interpret it; I've seen it many times since and feel it's a masterpiece of American cinema, and yet Frankel's book has given me even more to think about.

In this evocative memoir, the first in a series of three and a New York Times 1982 best book of the year, Simon, a travel writer, captures the world of an immigrant child growing up in the Bronx in the 1920s. Their fathers were harsh disciplinarians; mothers knew abortion to be the most effective birth control; and daughters saw poor scores in math crush their dreams. A story of triumph over the odds, of female rebellion, and of the many ways of learning, this memoir evokes a bygone world that also feels very contemporary.

A good friend and fellow writer introduced me to Hunter Shea at a brewpub in New York City, and I quickly discovered he was a titan in the realm of creature features. The Jersey Devil, a mutated megalodon, the Loch Ness monster… Shea loves his cryptids!

Hurling the ultimate wilderness creature into the urban jungle was inspired, and this story is just as fun as you’d expect. Packed with humor and over-the-top mayhem, this book is a hoot and I tore through it in a day.