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About Downtown: My Manhattan
Product Description A rich historical and personal portrait of Manhattan from the bestselling writer who is for many the living embodiment of the city.Manhattan, the keystone of New York City, is a place of ghosts and buried memory. One can still see remnants of the British colony, the mansions of the robber barons, and the speakeasies of the 1920s. These are the places that have captivated the imaginations of writers for centuries. Now Pete Hamill brings his unique knowledge and deep love of the city to a New York chronicle like no other.During his 40 years as a newspaperman, Pete Hamill has been getting to know Manhattans neighborhoods and inhabitants intimately, bearing witness to their greatest triumphs and tragedies. From the winding, bohemian streets of Greenwich Village to the seedy alleyways of the meatpacking district and to the weathered cobblestones of South Street Seaport, Hamill peels back the layers of history to reveal the citys past, present, and future.More than just history or reporting, this is an elegy by a native son who has lived through some of New Yorks most historic moments, and who continues to call this magnificent, haunted city his home. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. New Yorkers love calamity," writes Hamill in this marvelous guide to the most expensive piece of real estate in the world. This is a look at the calamities—and the successes—that have struck downtown Manhattan since the time of the first explorers from the Old World. Hamill's Manhattan is filled with history, architecture and giant personalities. Readers will be thrust into the Civil War riots in Greenwich Village in 1863 and will rejoice in a Times Square filled with delirious New Yorkers on VJ Day in 1945. They will watch the city grow as the subway crawls northward and the big skyscrapers begin to pop up, from the Woolworth Building in 1913 to the World Trade Center in the 1970s. The city's rogues and heroes are portrayed in action—from Aaron Burr and John Jacob Astor to Stanford White, Walter Winchell and a visiting Oscar Wilde. This is a companion piece to Forever, Hamill's novel of New York, and The Drinking Life, which explored the city through the alcohol-fueled eyes of the young Hamill. It is written with insight, humor and, most of all, a deep love of the Big Apple. Perhaps Hamill's mother, Anne Devlin, best put it into perspective: "You've seen it before," she told young Peter the first time he was transfixed by the spires of Gotham. "It's Oz." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Hamill is an excellent novelist (see in particular Snow in August, 1997), but in his latest book, he wears his hat as one of the last of the old-time newspapermen whose life and work simply define New York City. He calls this book an "essay . . . based on memory, reporting, and reading." What that amounts to is a delightfully personal, robustly informative portrait of New York, Manhattan in particular (and Lower Manhattan more specifically).Having been in the newspaper biz for four decades, he knows how to keep his eyes and ears open for the good story, the telling detail, and the quirky but exemplary character. As he escorts readers around the island of Manhattan, he takes heavy glances back into history--insisting that New Yorkers constantly experience "aching nostalgia"--as he not so much classifies but revels in the distinctions of NYC both as a "concrete place and as an idea." A marvelous read for anyone who has a hometown. Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved About the Author Pete Hamill is the author of the New York Times bestsellers A Drinking Life, Snow In August, and Forever. He has been editor-in-chief of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News. He lives in New York City.
