An expanded edition of the only comprehensive illustrated history of
New York--with more than 600 ravishing photographs and
illustrations--that tells the remarkable 400-year-long story of the city
from its beginning in 1624 up to the current moment. The companion
volume to the acclaimed PBS series.
This landmark book traces the spectacular growth of New York from its
initial settlement on the tip of Manhattan through the destruction
wrought by the Revolutionary War to its rise as the nation's premier
commercial capital and industrial center and as a magnet for immigrant
hopes and dreams in the 19th century to its standing as a beacon of
modern culture in the 20th century and as a worldwide symbol of
resilience in the 21st century.
The story continues here with new chapters delivering a sweeping
portrait of New York at the dawn of the 21st century, when it emerged
after decades of decline to assert its place at the very center of a new
globalized culture. Here is a city challenged--indeed, sometimes shaken
to its core--by a series of profound crises: the aftermath of 9/11, the
continual struggle with racial injustice, the financial crisis of 2008,
the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, the still unfolding cataclysm of
the COVID-19 pandemic--whose earliest and deadliest urban epicenter was
New York itself. Here too is a lively portrait of the city's vibrant
street life and culture: the birth of hip-hop in the South Bronx,
Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates in Central Park, the musicals of
Broadway, the explosion in location filmmaking in every borough, the
pivotal rise of the tech industry, and so much more.
The history of this city--especially in the tumultuous and
transformative two decades detailed in the new chapters--is an epic
story of rebirth and growth, an astonishing transfiguration, still in
progress, of the world's first modern city into a model and prototype
for the global city of the future.
