CITY FOR CONQUEST

This is a reissue of a book originally published by Covici, Friede, which is shortly to appear in pictures, and which deserves a wider market than it received in 1938. New York -- from the upper reaches of the Bronx, to the sordid tenements on Death Avenue and the river fronts, pitilessly exposed, in a succession of staccato episodes. Together they weave an intricate pattern of city life, pitched high, pitched low, in a wide range of social and economic scales. Does it get anywhere? Perhaps not, but the telling is vivid, poignant, searching, tragic. It is New York, at its worst rather than its best.