Here is New York | 
 enlarge | Author: E.b. White
Creator: Roger Angell
Publisher: Little Bookroom
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $8.75
You Save: $8.20 (48%)
New (32) Used (28) Collectible (1) from $6.61
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 26492
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 58
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.7 x 0.4
ISBN: 1892145022
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.71
EAN: 9781892145024
ASIN: 1892145022
Publication Date: January 1, 2000
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Condition: I read this book once for class this semester. The pages, cover, cover slip, and spine are all intact and in excellent condition. There are no markings in the book. A great read!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy." So begins E.B. White's classic meditation on that noisiest, most public of American cities. Written during the summer of 1948, well after the author and editor had taken up permanent residence in Maine, Here Is New York is a fond glance back at the city of his youth, when White was one of the "young worshipful beginners" who give New York its passionate character. It's also a tribute to the sheer implausibility of the place--the tangled infrastructure, the teeming humanity, the dearth of air and light. Much has changed since White wrote this essay, yet in a city "both changeless and changing" there are things here that will doubtless ring equally true 100 years from now. To wit, "New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience--if they did they would live elsewhere." Anyone who's ever cherished his essays--or even Charlotte's Web--knows that White is the most elegant of all possible stylists. There's not a sentence here that does not make itself felt right down to the reader's very bones. What would the author make of Giuliani's New York? Or of Times Square, Disney-style? It's hard to say for sure. But not even Planet Hollywood could ruin White's abiding sense of wonder: "The city is like poetry: it compresses all life ... into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines." This lovely new edition marks the 100th anniversary of E.B. White's birth--cause for celebration indeed. --Mary Park
Product Description
Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E.B. White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. The New York Times has named Here is New York one of the ten best books ever written about the metropolis, and The New Yorker calls it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Not as advertised February 8, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
The reviews I read said that White gives the reader a feel for life in New York. Nonsense - the book is vague to the point where it could have been titled, Here is London, or Here is Shanghai. If you want to get a feel for New York, or at least the Bronx where I grew up, read "World Fair" by Doctorow.
 Here Is New York by E. B. White February 23, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Anything by E. B. White is fine - he must have been quite young when he wrote this but I enjoyed reading it and getting a sense of what New York was like at that time - some of it is still true but much has changed.
A Love Letter to New York City April 24, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
HERE IS NEW YORK is a truly spectacular 1948 essay that originally appeared in Holiday magazine. Written by E.B. White and named one of the ten best books ever written about New York, this is a quick read that will leave you years later savoring White's timeless observations.
Writing in a hotel room during a sweltering heat wave, White takes the reader through the essence of New York City and its eight million inhabitants who he notes roughly fall into three groups: the natives, the commuters and the transplants.
Warning that "no one should come to New York unless he is willing to be lucky," White lovingly explains how the city is more a collection of thousands of small neighborhoods that implausibly operate independently of each other, completely oblivious to what is occurring only a few blocks away.
Though it was written almost 60 years ago, HERE IS NEW YORK is just as accurate today as the moment it was written. Yes, the city has changed but the basic structure of life in New York remains the same.
Overall HERE IS NEW YORK is a very positive book that will leave everyone feeling welcome and needed in America's biggest city. But eerily the book presciently warns that "a single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal passages, cremate the millions."
Though it was tough to read that passage right after 9/11 as I did, I still whole heartedly recommend HERE IS NEW YORK to anyone who lives in New York, commutes to and from there, or has just moved there and is now, as White observed, generating "enough heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company."
- Regina McMenamin
Style, Truth, Prescience December 11, 2005
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Early to a party, I was looking at a friend's bookcase and pulled this slim volume from a shelf. After reading the first sentence, I knew I had to have it.
Originally published in 1949, E.B. White, who no longer lived in New York City, captured the soul and spirit of the place. Nothing has changed. At the time, the United Nations building was under construction, and the bombing of London was fresh in his mind. He ends the book with a vision that perfectly balances hope with danger, in words prescient of September 11 - I re-read those paragraphs on every anniversary, it has become my ritual.
But what originally drew me to the book is not only the truth and insight of White, but his style, his felicity of expression. The author of "The Elements of Style" certainly knew the rules, and knew when to break them, as well. The second paragraph ends with a run-on sentence 198 words long, a thrilling joy ride which itself demonstrates how impossible it is to capture, in prose, the enormity and importance of this city.
I agree with Russell Baker, this is "the finest portrait ever painted of the city."
Small Treasure October 19, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
A tightly written prose essay. An appreciation of the city that was and is. Memories and images of things past and things enduring. The city of E.B. White. If you live her, love her or even dislike her this memoir will evoke strong recollections.
Short, incisive, majestic. A small treasure for those who love the great cities of the world.
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