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A review by eleneariel
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace
4.0
I couldn't have planned it better if I'd tried: I ended my reading year with this Pulitzer Prize-winning tome, finishing the last of the 1,400-odd pages just a week before I hop a plane to NYC herself. Although there were times I despaired of finishing on time (or finishing at all - it took me two months to read this, which is unheard of in my world), I am SO GLAD I read it. It's deepened my appreciation for the history of NYC so incredibly much, and I learned so many random things - about the man the Pulitzer is named after, 1700th c. fire-fighting techniques, that Edgar Allen Poe lived in NYC for a time, that there was once a literal wall at Wall Street and a literal canal at Canal street, and that when the Dakota was built people laughed at it because it was so far out in the sticks (?!) that they thought no one would want to live there.
Although I was more interested in the random trivia and everyday minutia than the big political picture, the politics taught me one thing: there really is nothing new under the sun. The same issues that have us all (quite rightly) worked up today were by and large the same ones people were freaking out out over in the 1800s. That doesn't mean we don't face real challenges today or that things couldn't get seriously bad, but at least there's historical evidence that people lived through horrible times before?
Although I was more interested in the random trivia and everyday minutia than the big political picture, the politics taught me one thing: there really is nothing new under the sun. The same issues that have us all (quite rightly) worked up today were by and large the same ones people were freaking out out over in the 1800s. That doesn't mean we don't face real challenges today or that things couldn't get seriously bad, but at least there's historical evidence that people lived through horrible times before?