An impressive and absorbing account of the origins of New York’s modern cityscape.
How New York City reached great heights.
Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writes Wood, historian of American architecture and urbanism, New York City “grew into one of the world’s largest, most important, and dynamic cities.” Roughly 1 million buildings—an astonishing number—went up in the city during that period. In his deeply informed and informative account, Wood describes how population growth and a robust economy gave rise to a large and sophisticated construction industry. He deftly describes the numerous and complex arrangements that provided much-needed office buildings, homes, factories, railway stations, bridges, streets, and subway lines. We read, often in detail, about large construction firms, building trade associations, the mechanics of tunnel construction, labor unions, architectural offices, and wrecking companies. Wood introduces us to government workers and officials such as Thomas F. Gilroy (head of the city’s Department of Public Works in the 1890s) and labor organizers such as Morris Rosen. After the city consolidated in 1898, Wood extends his gaze beyond Manhattan’s skyscrapers to the lower-density outer boroughs. Throughout, he attends to the many conflicts between business and labor over the length of the workday, safety, and wages; contractor competition for private commissions and lobbying for public works projects; and city government efforts to manage the corruption, labor unrest, noise and disruption, and the regulatory demands of building activity. For those fascinated by urban development (particularly construction and particularly in New York City), reading this substantial history is time well spent. What primarily matters to Wood, however, are facts. Consequently, he refrains from any attempt at a more general understanding of building construction. In the last chapter, after a brief summary, the story simply ends.
An impressive and absorbing account of the origins of New York’s modern cityscape.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2025
ISBN: 9780226836966
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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