Review by Booklist Review
The latest PBS documentary epic, which premieres in November, wraps its 12-hour-long arms around Gotham, recently the subject of a well-received scholarly history (Gotham, by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, 1998). Gotham may have been the burg's first nickname, conferred on it by Washington Irving in the 1820s when the city, by then commercially out-legging rival East Coast ports, began to take interest in its history. In Burns' hands, that history is cause for celebration of the de facto world capital the city has become. Several themes naturally structure his narrative: the city's capitalistic spirit, dating from the Dutch colonists; countercurrents of social movements; the city's immigrant and ethnic tapestry; its cultural fluorescences; and its constructed environment of buildings, bridges, and tunnels. Of these, the constructions are the most visible characters in Burns' drama, as they have been to any visitor or resident since Peter Stuyvesant commanded a defensive wall be built. Hundreds of images, many iconic, for example, the ironworkers on the Empire State Building, represent the continual building site Manhattan is, and such builders as DeWitt Clinton, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Robert Moses consequently rival in historical prominence the collection of crooks and reformers who have been the city's politicians. An impressively assembled album that handsomely shows off the city's magnificence. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A companion to an upcoming PBS series, this lavishly illustrated history is an engaging and intelligent work in its own right, presenting a coherent overview without ever glossing over thorny historical or political questions. By supplementing their well-researched text with photographs, paintings, newspaper headlines and interviews with historians and social critics, Burns (The Civil War, with Ken Burns) and Sanders have produced a volume that is as attractive as it is perceptive. Arranged chronologically, the book manages to capture some of the diverse elementsÄsuch as the immigrant communities, labor unrest, traditional and avant-garde cultures, crime and architecture, among other factorsÄthat continue to play important roles in the city's evolution. For example, the section on Greenwich Village, "The Republic of Washington Square," contains a succinct history of the area as a cultural engine, with rare photographs and illuminating quotes from Edmund Wilson and Floyd Dell. The section on the Harlem Renaissance provides a comprehensive analysis of the movement's development and importance, aptly illustrated and contextualized with an interview with David Levering Lewis. Burns and Sanders have successfully marshaled a huge amount of material into a format that is informative and highly entertaining. BOMC History Book Club selection. (Nov.) FYI: PBS will launch the 12-hour series New York on November 18. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The companion to a 12-hour PBS series on the city that never sleeps. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A lavishly illustrated volume that makes a significant contribution to the current renaissance in written and graphic histories of New York City. Within the past four years, two major works about the nation's greatest city'The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson, and Edwin G. Burrows's and Mike Wallace's Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898'have appeared to critical acclaim. No doubt as a result, TV writer/producer Ric Burns and his associates saw the opportunity for a television series on the subject. Their work here coincides with, and is meant to complement, that upcoming production. While typical of the TV tie-in genre, this entry is among the very best of its kind. A solid history in its own right, it takes us from the arrival of the first Europeans to the present and offers a highly readable tale of the city's growth and the lives of its inhabitants. Except for the native tribes, who are unaccountably ignored, everyone and every thing New York'buildings, transportation, port, commerce, and money chief among them'plays a role. But what makes this tome worth its hefty price is its illustrations, aptly chosen to reveal the city's complex history in images. The result is a vibrant, jittery, opulently designed, very New York volume, reflective at once of its ostensible metropolitan subject, the television medium that spawned it, and our frazzled, segmented, postmodern culture. Only a few brief articles by, and interviews with, urban scholars seem out of place. While the complete history of Gotham will probably never be written, it's impossible to imagine a more pleasing, up-to-date, one-volume tale of the city for contemporary readers (and viewers). (500 color and b&w illus., not seen) (History Book Club selection; First printing of 100,000)
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