The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00G1BQHQ8 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever.
Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs - an astonishing 6,000 miles. His epic journey lasted four years and took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and from every walk of life, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayors Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Edward Koch. Their stories and his are the subject of this captivating and highly original book.
We meet the Guyanese immigrant who grows beautiful flowers outside his modest Queens residence in order to always remember the homeland he left behind, the Brooklyn-raised grandchild of Italian immigrants who illuminates a window of his brownstone with the family's old neon grocery store sign, and many, many others. Helmreich draws on firsthand insights to examine essential aspects of urban social life such as ethnicity, gentrification, and the use of space. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan.
Truly unforgettable, The New York Nobody Knows will forever change how you view the world's greatest city.
Direct download links available for Download The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 13 hours and 41 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible Studios
- Audible.com Release Date: October 20, 2013
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00G1BQHQ8
My favorite description of New York City is that it is very convenient to the United States without actually having to live there. William Helmreich examines the extent to which this is true in a remarkable tour of the city, that saw him cover more than six thousand miles - on foot - up and down every street there is. The result is a book with a totally appropriate title: The New York Nobody Knows.
When I was a reporter, I marveled at my privileged status. I got to go places and speak to people I would otherwise not only not have access to, but who would be suspicious if I tried. This book empowered Helmreich to accost anyone, anywhere. So he saw New York like no one else has. He found that people in sports bars also have automatic icebreakers asking the score, and dog walkers have it because of their pets. My favorite of his discoveries is that "many people don't pay attention to what you say, as long as you say something". It got him into numerous places and revealing conversations with total strangers.
New York is different than pretty much any major city in the world, because it is the proverbial melting pot. Races, colors, religions and nationalities have to live and work side by side in cramped quarters, and they do to an extent that is simply not replicated anywhere else. For anyone outside the city, this will be a revelation. For those who live it, it is acknowledgment and confirmation of a work in process. As former mayor David Dinkins told Helmreich, New York was the only major American city to not break out in riots after the Rodney King incident in LA. New Yorkers look at things differently, and this book makes that really come alive.
New Yorkers don't expect comfort and are resilient, he says.
William B. Helmreich has accomplished a rather remarkable feat. Over the course of four years, the graduate professor of sociology at City University of New York has covered all 6,000 miles of New York City's streets by foot. While his book includes the subtitle, "Walking 6,000 Miles in the City," his pedestrian (here I am obviously referring to the noun rather than the adjective) accomplishment is not the focal point of The New York Nobody Knows. Instead, he presents a detailed and insightful examination of the various sociological aspects of the city. He bolsters his analysis by drawing from his experiences walking New York's streets as well as from his day job as an academic. Helmreich's book is an engrossing and very informative sociological study of New York that is especially strong when covering the less-popular boroughs that are far less popular in the literature about the city. It was published by Princeton University Press and is certainly a valuable resource for any student of the field but The New York Nobody Knows is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in learning more about the city and its various and often colorful inhabitants.
The book is ordered thematically rather than geographically, further demonstrating that Helmreich's purpose is not to merely outline his four years of constitutionals. Instead, it is organized thematically. Helmreich looks into sociological subjects such as immigration, gentrification, and crime as they relates to New York. He devotes some time to the built environment, but he mainly concerns himself with getting to know the people of the city. Helmreich often stopped various people on the street for interviews, including in the more dangerous areas such as East New York and South Bronx.
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