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World Hotels - Here is New York
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List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $11.53
Your Save: $ 5.42 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Little Bookroom
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.71
EAN: 9781892145024
ISBN: 1892145022
Label: Little Bookroom
Manufacturer: Little Bookroom
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 58
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Publisher: Little Bookroom
Release Date: 2000-01-01
Studio: Little Bookroom
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Editorial Reviews:
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Chosen by The New York Times as one of the ten best books ever written about the city. In the summer of 1949, E.B. White sat in a New York City hotel room and, sweltering in the summer 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. Like most of White’s prose (his essays, his "Talk of the Town" columns, The Elements of Style), this book is of modest length. Yet, like Charlotte’s Web, it speaks more eloquently about what lasts and what really matters than other, more expansive pieces. The New York Times has chosen Here Is New York as one of the ten best books ever written about the grand metropolis. The New Yorker calls it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city." This edition of Here Is New York marks the 100th anniversary of E.B. White’s birth, and appears with a new introduction by Roger Angell.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The indestructible spirit of the world's greatest city
Comment: E.B. White, the author of the classic THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, shows off that style brilliantly in this highly literate, amusing, and passionate memoir of New York City in 1948. Although the surface details of New York have changed in sixty years, the spirit remains the same, and that's what White is really writing about. White is also disturbingly prophetic when he writes, "The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions." I doubt that a book such as this could be written today. Some editor would "dumb it down" and politically correct it. But how refreshing it is to read such wonderful prose. This is really a 56-page essay between hard covers, rather than a "book." As such, it's very a very easy and exhilarating reading experience and would make a wonderful gift for anyone who loves New York or would like to visit it someday. Five stars, absolutely.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not as advertised
Comment: The reviews I read said that White gives the reader a feel for life in New York. Nonsense - the book is vague to the point where it could have been titled, Here is London, or Here is Shanghai. If you want to get a feel for New York, or at least the Bronx where I grew up, read "World Fair" by Doctorow.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Here Is New York by E. B. White
Comment: Anything by E. B. White is fine - he must have been quite young when he wrote this but I enjoyed reading it and getting a sense of what New York was like at that time - some of it is still true but much has changed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Love Letter to New York City
Comment: HERE IS NEW YORK is a truly spectacular 1948 essay that originally appeared in Holiday magazine. Written by E.B. White and named one of the ten best books ever written about New York, this is a quick read that will leave you years later savoring White's timeless observations.
Writing in a hotel room during a sweltering heat wave, White takes the reader through the essence of New York City and its eight million inhabitants who he notes roughly fall into three groups: the natives, the commuters and the transplants.
Warning that "no one should come to New York unless he is willing to be lucky," White lovingly explains how the city is more a collection of thousands of small neighborhoods that implausibly operate independently of each other, completely oblivious to what is occurring only a few blocks away.
Though it was written almost 60 years ago, HERE IS NEW YORK is just as accurate today as the moment it was written. Yes, the city has changed but the basic structure of life in New York remains the same.
Overall HERE IS NEW YORK is a very positive book that will leave everyone feeling welcome and needed in America's biggest city. But eerily the book presciently warns that "a single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal passages, cremate the millions."
Though it was tough to read that passage right after 9/11 as I did, I still whole heartedly recommend HERE IS NEW YORK to anyone who lives in New York, commutes to and from there, or has just moved there and is now, as White observed, generating "enough heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company."
- Regina McMenamin
Customer Rating:
Summary: Style, Truth, Prescience
Comment: Early to a party, I was looking at a friend's bookcase and pulled this slim volume from a shelf. After reading the first sentence, I knew I had to have it.
Originally published in 1949, E.B. White, who no longer lived in New York City, captured the soul and spirit of the place. Nothing has changed. At the time, the United Nations building was under construction, and the bombing of London was fresh in his mind. He ends the book with a vision that perfectly balances hope with danger, in words prescient of September 11 - I re-read those paragraphs on every anniversary, it has become my ritual.
But what originally drew me to the book is not only the truth and insight of White, but his style, his felicity of expression. The author of "The Elements of Style" certainly knew the rules, and knew when to break them, as well. The second paragraph ends with a run-on sentence 198 words long, a thrilling joy ride which itself demonstrates how impossible it is to capture, in prose, the enormity and importance of this city.
I agree with Russell Baker, this is "the finest portrait ever painted of the city."
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