GREENWlCH VILLAGE AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

A lively, impeccably researched, and extensively illustrated historical tour of Greenwich Village. Miller--who's lived in the area for 20 years and who's curating an upcoming Greenwich Village exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York--arranges his material mostly geographically rather than chronologically, but what emerges from his anecdote-packed pages is a near definitive account of America's premier bohemia, from its 16th-century Dutch origins near the site of the Indian village of Sapokanican through its 20th-century flowering as a cultural mecca and laboratory for the avantgarde. Streets, shops, theaters, houses, bars, hangouts, parks, and storied Village residents--all receive pedigreed biographies from Miller, who digs up a dizzying array of facts, tales, and trivia: that the ice-cream soda was invented in 1872 at a parlor on Sixth Avenue; that the hand- and footprints of Ruby Keeler, Alexis Smith, Gloria Swanson, and others, preserved in cement, grace the sidewalk outside a small revival movie theater in the East Village; and so on. A vivid, entertaining history with 257 full-color and b&w photographs, plus 12 maps.