In these vignettes of life along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, the New York Times’s Constance Rosenblum examines the place of art in this community— its installation, its reception by local residents, and the debates that often surround it. From the growing popularity of European-style Art Deco in the 1930s and '40s, to the opinion of some Bronx residents that these modern additions were “ugly as hell,” and from public art criticized for controversial content to buildings revered...

These forty essays from the New York Times' City section tell "stories of human life in all its quirky richness" ( The Boston Globe).Featuring a cast of stellar writers, this collection brings some of the best essays from the City section to readers beyond the five boroughs. New York Stories profiles people like sixteen-year-old Barbara Ott, who surfs the waters off Rockaway in Queens, and Sonny Payne, the beloved panhandler of the F trai...

An enthralling story of the iconic Grand Concourse in the West BronxStretching over four miles through the center of the West Bronx, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, known simply as the Grand Concourse, has gracefully served as silent witness to the changing face of the Bronx, and New York City, for a century. Now, a New York Times editor brings to life the street in all its raucous glory.Designed by a French engineer in the late nineteenth century to echo ...

"A good biography of a bad girl," an account of the first tabloid celebrity, a woman who made a career of marrying millionaires ( The New Yorker ).One of America's most talked about personalities during the Jazz Age, Peggy Hopkins Joyce was the quintessential gold digger, the real-life Lorelei Lee. Married six times, to several millionaires and even a count, Joyce had no discernible talent except self-promotion. A barber's...

There may be eight million stories in the Naked City, but there are also nearly three million dwelling places, ranging from Park Avenue palaces to Dickensian garrets and encompassing much in between. The doorways to these residences are tantalizing portals opening onto largely invisible lives. Habitats offers 40 vivid and intimate stories about how New Yorkers really live in their brownstones, their apartments, their mansions, their lofts, and as a whole presents a rich, multi-textured por...

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 thro...