This collection of four books includes:
Here is New York
by E. B. White; introduction by Roger Angell
“Just to dip into this miraculous essay—to experience the wonderful lightness and momentum of its prose, its supremely casual air and surprisingly tight knit—is to find oneself going ahead and rereading it all. White’s homage feels as fresh as fifty years ago.“ —John Updike
In the summer of 1948, E. B. White sat in a New York City hotel room and, sweltering in the heat, wrote a remarkable pristine essay, Here is New York. Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, the author’s stroll around Manhattan—with the reader arm-in-arm—remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America’s foremost literary figures. Here is New York has been chosen by The New York Times as one of the ten best books ever written about the city. The New Yorker calls it “the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.” Hardcover.
“New York was the most exciting, most civilized, most congenial city in the world when this book was written. It’s the finest portrait ever painted of the city at the height of its glory.“ —Russell Baker
Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir
With the Lost Photographs of David Attie
by Truman Capote; introduction by George Plimpton; afterword by Eli Attie
In 2001, Truman Capote’s stylish essay in praise of Brooklyn was brought back into print, but not until 2014—more than 50 years after they were taken—were the original photographs commissioned to illustrate the piece discovered by the late photographer’s son. Also found among the negatives were previously unknown portraits of Capote; none of the photos have ever been published. In a new edition with a new title, Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir, the words and images are united for the first time.
Beloved by literary figures from Walt Whitman to Thomas Wolfe, Brooklyn cast its spell over Truman Capote, too. For a few tranquil years in the Fifties and Sixties, he happily made his home on Willow Street, where he wrote the legendary essay about Brooklyn Heights, in which he vividly evokes the neighborhood he came to know well, bringing to life the landscape that was for him a world of grand homes and dimly recalled gentility, a garden overhung with wisteria, the famous Promenade, the sometimes menacing waterfront. This is his satisfying meander through a unique time and place.
David Attie’s images provide a stunning and atmospheric parallel portrait of Brooklyn in 1959—its buildings, shops, lost moments—a city at once strangely familiar yet largely vanished. Horse-drawn wagons deliver produce to housewives, kids swim unsupervised in the East River and get into mischief on the docks, and life plays out on stoops and streets against a backdrop of period architecture, the spectacular bridge, and the skyline of Manhattan. Hardcover.
“The long-lost photos . . . bring even more life to Capote’s sparkling description of the history and spirit of the neighborhood, with its eccentric characters, back alleys and fine houses (‘as elegant and other-era as formal calling cards’).” —The New York Times
Andy Warhol's New York City
Four Walks, Uptown to Downtown
by Thomas Kiedrowski; original illustrations by Vito Giallo
Few figures have influenced New York City—its art, its commerce, its style, its nightlife, its legends—like Andy Warhol. The 80 sites in Andy Warhol’s New York City bring to life the electrifying world he created and include his Factories and residences, as well as clubs, museums, boutiques, restaurants, and dozens of glamorous and gritty places in between.
New Yorkers will savor glimpses of the city’s icons—vanished (Schrafft’s), current (Serendipity 3), and never realized (the Andy-Mat); art lovers will appreciate the listing of Warhol’s many gallery shows; anyone interested in fashion and celebrity will be intrigued by the details of his stylish world. Brief biographies of personalities in the book describe the cast of glittering characters that enter and leave the stage as Warhol’s mesmerizing story unfolds.
Nine original drawings in the book were made specially for Andy Warhol’s New York City by the artist Vito Giallo, a former studio assistant of Warhol’s who assisted in the making of hundreds of Warhol’s ink blot drawings, and who later owned the antique store where Warhol bought thousands of items that were posthumously auctioned at Sotheby’s.
The sites are divided into four walks. Paperback.
Cleaning Up New York
The ’70s Cult Classic
by Bob Rosenthal
“Bob Rosenthal’s Cleaning Up New York is a perfect little gem of a book. There is not one wasted or misplaced word in this chronicle, which manages to contain an awful lot of the world in its few pages. It’s not only about the city and its range of denizens, but also about the art of living, the satisfaction of humble work, the way poetry arises from daily experience. and if that weren’t enough, it also includes really useful advice about cleaning!"—Lucy Sante
The East Village, NYC, 1976. A 26-year-old starving poet needs $60. What else to do but register with a temp agency as a house cleaner? The excitement never wanes as he is catapulted into the everyday yet unimaginable worlds behind closed (apartment) doors.
Bob knows one thing: the dirt will always win. Clients are a bit more unpredictable, he discovers, as he comes to terms with eccentric domestic habits and strange discoveries. When Bob becomes a weekly fixture in his clients’ lives, anything can happen, and does. Cleaning Up New York has been a cult classic since it was first published in 1976 in an edition of 750. Paperback.
