New York: An Illustrated History of the People

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The first pictorial history of the diverse peoples of the world who have made New York their home.

According to the 1990 census, New York, for the first time in a century, had more foreign-born inhabitants than native-born residents. A city of continual immigration, New York's people have been documented by major artists and photographers from the earliest European settlers to the present.

In this majestic illustrated history, with over 500 prints, paintings, and photographs, many never before published, we see the arrival of the first wave of Dutch and Anglo-Saxon settlers in the seventeenth century. We progress through Irish and German immigrations in the mid-nineteenth century, the immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of vast numbers of Italians and Eastern European Jews as well as Greeks and Slavs, followed by African Americans moving from the South after World War I. Finally, as the twentieth century comes to a close, Caribbeans, Latinos, Africans, and Asians have become the dominant new New Yorkers.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

This heavily illustrated book about the diversity of New York City's inhabitants focuses on the various waves of immigrants. Chapters group the subjects chronologically, with a brief overview of each period. New York is more than a mix of groups that originally came here from other countries, however. There are also Suffragettes and street vendors, bohemians and baseball players, taxi drivers and philanthropists and dozens of other groups; and most of these topics get a page in this study in contrasts. The distinct quality of various neighborhoods and boroughs at fixed points in time comes through in the pictures, although the ethnicity and demographics of most NYC neighborhoods have changed rapidly over the last few decades. Schoener's (Harlem on My Mind, LJ 8/95) text provides a very brief introduction to each group; the archival illustrations are the main reason to purchase. Although the book does not cover new ground and probably reinforces more than challenges existing ideas about the people of New York, it is an accessible presentation of a popular subject.--Kathleen Collins, Bank of America Archives, San Francisco

Kirkus Reviews

A brisk, often fascinating tour of five centuries of life in New York City, as displayed in some 800 prints and photographs. Schoener has compiled several more narrowly focused visual archives of city life (Harlem on My Mind; The Lower East Side); this time out, he aims for a broad overview, but retains an emphasis on the lives and labors of the anonymous masses who were drawn to the city, and who made it a dominant presence in American life. Most of the illustrations deal with the modest realities of everyday life: portraits and parties, street fairs and urban scenes, parades and home life, workshops and neighborhoods. Four of the five chronological chapters use the experiences of particular ethnic groups (the chapter on the period from 1825þ80 deals with the waves of Irish and German immigrants; the chapter on the turbulent period from 1881þ1914 explores the lives of Jewish and Italian immigrants and their impact on the city) to suggest the continual making and remaking of the city, its industries, and its neighborhoods. Each chapter in turn is broken into discrete two-page spreads (such as þStreet Kids,þ þThe Immigrant Workerþs Life,þ and þThe Black Bourgeoisieþ in the chapter dealing with the late 19th century). Schoener provides a terse narrative, accompanied by period quotes from letters, newspapers, and books. He has uncovered large numbers of unfamiliar and often powerful photographs, and theyþre reproduced here with exceptional clarity. A handsome, lively, and useful addition to the lengthy shelf of studies of the cityþs vigorous, complex ethnic history.