A City in a Book: New York Histories

My recent post of Jane Jacobs and the book Wrestling With Moses got me interested (again) in writing about New York City.

Time and again New York is the setting for interesting and exciting fiction, but what about non-fiction accounts of the real city and the people who have lived there?

Here's a selection of great titles that all focus on different aspects of the history of the Big Apple.

Have a favourite NYC history you don't see here? Tell us about it in the comments field.


All Night Party: the women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930
by Andrea Barnet

American Passage: the history of Ellis Island
by Vincent J. Cannato

Downtown: my Manhattan
by Pete Hamill

Harlem: the four hundred year history from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America
by Jonathan Gill

Helluva Town: the story of New York City during World War II
by Richard Goldstein

Gotham: a history of New York City to 1898
by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

New York Burning: liberty, slavery, and conspiracy in eighteenth-century Manhattan
by Jill Lepore

Triangle: the fire that changed America
by David Von Drehle