What do Francine Prose, Suketu Mehta, and Edwidge Danticat have in common? Each suffers from an incurable love affair with the Big Apple, and each contributed to the canon of writing New York has inspired by way of the New York Times City Section, a part of the paper that once defined Sunday afternoon leisure for the denizens of the five boroughs. Former City Section editor Constance Rosenblum has again culled a diverse cast of voices that brought to vivid life our metropolis through those pages in this follow-up to the publication New York Stories (2005).
The fifty essays in More New York Stories unite the city's best-known writers to provide a window to the bustle and richness of city life. As with the previous collection, many of the contributors need no introduction, among them Kevin Baker, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Dorothy Gallagher, Colin Harrison, Frances Kiernan, Nathaniel Rich, Jonathan Rosen, Christopher Sorrentino, and Robert Sullivan; they are among the most eloquent observers of our urban life. Others are relative newcomers. But all are voices worth listening to, and the result is a comprehensive and entertaining picture of New York in all its many guises.
The section on "Characters'' offers a bouquet of indelible profiles. The section on “Places”takes us on journeys to some of the city's quintessential locales. “Rituals, Rhythms, and Ruminations” seeks to capture the city's peculiar texture, and the section called “Excavating the Past” offers slices of the city's endlessly fascinating history.
Delightful for dipping into and a great companion for anyone planning a trip, this collection is both a heart-warming introduction to the human side of New York and a reminder to life-long New Yorkers of the reasons we call the city home.
From Barnes & Noble
This anthology contains fifty memorable stories from New York Times' award-winning City Section. The line-up of contributing authors includes Francine Prose, Kevin Baker, Jonathan Rosen, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Christopher Sorrentino, Suketu Mehta, and Nathaniel Rich. The pulse of a great city in sculpted prose.
Publishers Weekly
For 16 years, local news and quirky, personal stories found a home in the (now defunct) City section of the Sunday New York Times. Former section editor Rosenblum gathers 50 of the best pieces of the post–September 11 era by masters of the form including Edwidge Danticat and Francine Prose. Roy Hoffman's remembrance of a West Village buddy with cerebral palsy who was forced to confine his world to the few blocks he could navigate is complemented by Saki Knafo's tribute to a group of aging amateur athletes who've been playing basketball together for 33 years and David McAninch's appreciative travelogue of the "forgotten" cityscape of lunch counters, taverns, and cigar shops--all odes to a New York less romanticized and more real. Tragedies--like the story of giving a homeless man buried in the city's potter's field a proper family funeral--are squeezed like subway passengers between droller accounts of, say, the weekly lunch ritual of the New Yorker's wry cartoonists. Organized thematically into such categories as "Characters" and "Rituals, Rhythms and Ruminations," this rich sampling delivers. (Nov.)
Library Journal
The New York Times printed its last issue of its City Section in May 2009 after 16 years of featuring slices of life in Manhattan and the other four boroughs of New York. Like New York Stories—also edited by the section's former editor, Rosenblum (Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope Along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx)—this commemorative collection captures the essence of New York's distinctive urban life. Fifty intriguing and heartfelt essays are divided into four sections—"Characters," "Places in the City's Heart," "Rituals, Rhythms, and Ruminations," and "Excavating the Past." The book includes contemporary and historical reflections on the people, places, and spirit of the city. While most of the section's essays were written by Times staffers, this collection also features contributions from well-known authors like Edwidge Danticat, Jonathan Rosen, and Nathaniel Rich. VERDICT For fans of the Big Apple and the New York Times.—Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL
