New York City: a battered town left for dead, one that almost a million people abandoned and where those who remained had to live behind triple deadbolt locks. It was reinvigorated and became the capital of wealth and innovation, an engine of cultural vibrancy, a magnet for immigrants, and a city of endless possibility. Since its founding in 1968, New York Magazine has told the story of that city's constant morphing, week after week. This book draws from all that coverage to present an enormous, sweeping, idiosyncratic picture of a half-century at the center of the world. It constitutes an unparalleled history of that city's transformation, and of a New York City institution as well.
The must-have guide to pop culture, history, and world-changing ideas that started in New York City, from the magazine at the center of it all. Since its founding in 1624, New York City has been a place that creates things. What began as a trading post for beaver pelts soon transformed into a hub of technological, social, and cultural innovation—but beyond fostering literal inventions like the elevator (inside Cooper Union in 1853), Q-tips (by Polish immigrant Leo Gerstenzang in 1923), General Tso’s chicken (reimagined for American tastes in the 1970s by one of its Hunanese creators), the singles bar (1965 on the Upper East Side), and Scrabble (1931 in Jackson Heights), the city has given birth to or perfected idioms, forms, and ways of thinking that have changed the world, from Abstract Expressionism to Broadway, baseball to hip-hop, news blogs to neoconservatism to the concept of “downtown.” Those creations and more are all collected in The Encyclopedia of New York, an A-to-Z compendium of unexpected origin stories, hidden histories, and useful guides to the greatest city in the world, compiled by the editors of New York Magazine (a city invention itself, since 1968) and featuring contributions from Rebecca Traister, Jerry Saltz, Frank Rich, Jonathan Chait, Rhonda Garelick, Kathryn VanArendonk, Christopher Bonanos, and more. Here you will find something fascinating and uniquely New York on every page: a history of the city’s skyline, accompanied by a tour guide’s list of the best things about every observation deck; the development of positive thinking and punk music; appreciations of seltzer and alternate-side-of-the-street parking; the oddest object to be found at Ripley’s Believe It or Not!; musical theater next to muckracking and mugging; and the unbelievable revelation that English muffins were created on...West Twentieth Street. Whether you are a lifelong resident, a curious newcomer, or an armchair traveler, this is the guidebook you’ll need, straight from the people who know New York best.
The #1 New York Times Bestseller! With over 500 vibrant, full-color photos, Humans of New York: Stories is an insightful and inspiring collection of portraits of the lives of New Yorkers. Humans of New York: Stories is the culmination of five years of innovative storytelling on the streets of New York City. During this time, photographer Brandon Stanton stopped, photographed, and interviewed more than ten thousand strangers, eventually sharing their stories on his blog, Humans of New York. In Humans of New York: Stories, the interviews accompanying the photographs go deeper, exhibiting the intimate storytelling that the blog has become famous for today. Ranging from whimsical to heartbreaking, these stories have attracted a global following of more than 30 million people across several social media platforms.
A stunning four-color biography of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the bestselling tradition of Notorious RBG and Pelosi that explores her explosive rise and impact on the future of American culture and politics. The candidate was young—twenty-eight years old, a child of Puerto Rico, the Bronx, and Yorktown Heights. She was working as a waitress and bartender. She was completely unknown, and taking on a ten-term incumbent in a city famous for protecting its political institutions. “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a video launching her campaign, the camera following her as she hastily pulled her hair into a bun. But she did. And in perhaps the most stunning upset in recent memory, she won. At twenty-nine, she was sworn in as the youngest member of the 116th Congress and became the youngest woman to serve as a representative in United States history. Before long, Ocasio-Cortez had earned her own shorthand title—AOC—and was one of the most talked-about public figures (loved and loathed) in the world. Her natural ability to connect with everyday people through the social media feeds grew her following into the multimillions. Every statement she made, every tweet and Instagram Live, went viral, and her term had barely begun before people were speculating that she could one day be president. The question seemed to be on everyone’s mind: How did this woman come from nowhere to acquire such influence, and so fast? Now, in Take Up Space, that question is answered through a kaleidoscopic biography by the editors of New York magazine that features the riveting account of her rise by Lisa Miller, an essay by Rebecca Traister that explains why she is an unprecedented figure in American politics, and multiform explorations (reportage, comic, history, analysis, photography) of AOC’s outsize impact on American culture and politics. Throughout, AOC is revealed in all her power and vulnerability, and understood in the context of the fast-changing America that made her possible—and perhaps even inevitable.
In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.
Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.
From the author of Europe Central, winner of the National Book Award, a journalistic tour de force along the Mexican-American border – a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award For generations of migrant workers, Imperial Country has held the promise of paradise and the reality of hell. It sprawls across a stirring accidental sea, across the deserts, date groves and labor camps of Southeastern California, right across the border into Mexico. In this eye-opening book, William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region, exploring polluted rivers and guarded factories and talking with everyone from Mexican migrant workers to border patrolmen. Teeming with patterns, facts, stories, people and hope, this is an epic study of an emblematic region.
On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong—with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can—with our help—avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.
