By Walt Whitman
One of my favorite passages in Leaves of Grass, that breathless, exuberant poem so rich and full of innocence and joy and generosity and compassion, is “Mannahatta.” It springs from a 19th-century sense of possibility, but it feels just like Manhattan now. “Numberless crowded streets—high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies.”
American Notes for General Circulation
By Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens visited the city and described it in American Notes. The passages about the poor and criminal sections of the city are very … Dickensian.
By Edith Wharton
In addition to all its other virtues, the novel has wonderful descriptions of the city and the social significance of real estate. Location, location, location.
By Rex Stout
The slang, the streets, the taxi drivers, the offices and brownstones and crummy apartments—these books always feel like the New York of black-and-white movies from the ’30s to me. A fantasy reality I'm convinced existed.
By Claude Brown
A haunting memoir of growing up poor and black in New York City in the ’40s and ’50s. Nero Wolfe this is not. Written with tenderness and swagger and terrifying honesty. It came out in 1965, and it is fueled by the hope of that time.
By George Selden, illustrated by Garth Williams
Everyone who moves to New York City has a book or movie or song that epitomizes the place for them. For me, it's The Cricket in Times Square, written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams. It came out in 1960 when I was 7. Chester, the cricket overwhelmed by the city, came from Connecticut, like me. I lived in New York for 40 years, and I always felt a little like Chester—welcomed, inspired, enchanted, and stunned. Still do.
