2022-08-12
A journalist who has covered New York City for more than 50 years offers a potpourri of stories about some of the city’s overlooked residents during four centuries of history.
America’s largest and most polyglot city is impossible to bring into crystal-clear focus, but this book makes it come alive. Although not all of Roberts’ figures are stellar humans, he succeeds in his quest to rescue New York’s “unheralded heroes, men and women whose roles were largely overlooked or, at best, survive as a footnote.” Writing with delightful verve, the author creates a narrative that falls somewhere between a rogues’ gallery and a pantheon of extraordinary people. Opening with a murder and closing with an inspirational neighborhood leader, the text is filled with a full range of NYC characters, the already well-known ones playing only walk-on roles. We learn about Revolutionary firebrand Isaac Sears; African American oyster restaurateur Thomas Downing; Bishop John Hughes, a champion of Catholic schooling; attorney Charles O’Conor, who brought down Boss Tweed; Elizabeth Jennings, who protested discrimination on public transport 100 years before Rosa Parks; Charles Dowd, creator of standard time zones; the Bradley-Martins, the city’s most extravagant and clueless 19th-century couple; Clara Lemlich, early-20th-century labor firebrand; Ciro Terranova, the “Artichoke King” and crime-family mobster; Audrey Munson, “America’s first supermodel”; Jack Maple (whose sketch is the most amusing tale), the transit cop who invented the crime-mapping Compstat system; and Carmelia Goffe, an unsung heroine of the revival of her Brownsville neighborhood in the 1970s and beyond. Perhaps fittingly, the book feels like a New Deal painting you spot in post offices: a panorama of all kinds of New Yorkers doing their best to either improve the world or take advantage of it. The author readily admits his subjectivity, wryly noting that “ ‘The Biography’ might have required 923,380,602 chapters, if you accept that figure as the number of people who ever lived in New York.”
A book guaranteed to enlighten and entertain anyone interested in NYC.
An ingenious social history of Gotham rendered in deft profiles … [Roberts] is an ace at compact biography … You're likely to finish the book with a new appreciation.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Roberts knows his New York, in the way both of a scholar who's read everything ever published on the city's past and of a reporter who's spent his career engaging its people … [The New Yorkers] abounds in rich portraits.” —New York Times Book Review
“[The New Yorkers] is my favorite kind of municipal portrait, a gathering of profiles, not of the famous but the merely pivotal.” —Chicago Tribune
“[The New Yorkers is] a detailed look at mostly unknown folks who contributed to the city … Roberts focuses on ordinary people involved in extraordinary things.” —New York Daily News
“Few writers have both a keen eye for biographical detail and the ability to place those details in a portrait that resonates across history. Sam Roberts, who has worked for The New York Times for decades, is that kind of writer, as he deftly proves in his new book.” —Air Mail, "Staff Picks"
“Roberts knows New York on an almost cellular level … Roberts tells an epic tale through these 31 stories, the evolution of a great city developed by people who wrote history with their lives.” —New York Journal of Books
“Roberts, a legendary chronicler of the city, now writing obituaries for the New York Times, digs into the past and illuminates New Yorkers who didn't make it into the usual narratives of the city yet played a transformative role or personified a moment in its history . . . a congenial expert guide in essays.” —The National Book Review
“[Sam Roberts] has done a fantastic job of engaging his readers with the past … The New Yorkers is an excellent book that readers will find fascinating and full of interesting historical tidbits.” —Bowling Green Daily News
“You don't have to be a New Yorker or even a big-city dweller to be delighted by the tales that author Sam Roberts offers … This is history at its most enjoyable, no matter where you live or hail from. If you love a book full of surprises, put 'The New Yorkers' on your radar.” —The Bookworm Sez
“Entertaining and informative … Roberts's wry wit and rigorous research enliven accounts of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the displacement of white residents from Harlem, and more. The result is a treasure trove of New York City lore.” —Publishers Weekly
“America's largest and most polyglot city is impossible to bring into crystal-clear focus, but this book makes it come alive…. A book guaranteed to enlighten and entertain anyone interested in NYC.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Sam Roberts has crafted thirty-one biographical essays – deeply researched and engagingly written – that together constitute an excellent history of New York City.” —Mike Wallace, author of Gotham
“Of the many dozens of historians who write about the Empire City, Sam Roberts has long been the most clever and most imaginative. The New Yorkers follows in his distinguished tradition. He writes a grand narrative through the biographies of mostly forgotten persons who made a difference at critical moments in the past 400 years. Fans of New York and its colorful history will not be disappointed.” —Kenneth T. Jackson, Barzun Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University; editor-in-chief, The Encyclopedia of New York City
“From its post-American Revolution resurrection from the ashes to its meteoric rise to a global city, Sam Roberts renders a New York that is as captivating, gutsy, and colorful as its people. A fascinating and eye-opening window onto a storied city.” —Pamela Newkirk, author of Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga
“Anything Sam Roberts has to write about New York City is worth reading, but with The New Yorkers he has outdone himself. Even those who know the city will be surprised to learn about many of the men and women profiled here-and surprised to learn what Sam has to tell them about the ones they do know. If history is biography, then this is both history and biography at their best.” —Kevin Baker, author of PARADISE ALLEY
“In The New Yorkers, Sam Roberts illuminates the city's inimitable personality with a charming cast of groundbreakers, do-gooders, and rascals you will be delighted to get to know. Written with a wry eye, a tender heart, and gusto aplenty, this book provides a binge-worthy carnival of entertainment.” —Joseph Berger, author of THE WORLD IN A CITY
“[Roberts] offers a solid education in New York architecture that pays close attention to the personalities, politics, economics, and natural disasters that inevitably accompany it . . . An entertaining picture of New York through the centuries.” —Kirkus on A HISTORY OF NEW YORK IN 27 BUILDINGS
“[Roberts is] a witty and informed narrator whose enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. This lucid account will help New Yorkers to see their city in a new light.” —Publishers Weekly on A HISTORY OF NEW YORK IN 27 BUILDINGS
“The best thing to happen to New York since Nathan's hot dogs and Junior's cheesecake.” —Marty Markowitz, former Borough President of Brooklyn on A HISTORY OF NEW YORK IN 101 OBJECTS
