Skip to main content

Sidewalks of New York


This is a marvelous little book by Lewis Mumford.  I thought it would be a good point of departure for those who want to share their observations and book notes on New York, past and present.

Comments

  1. I also recommend Joe Mitchell's "Up in the Old Hotel."

    ReplyDelete
  2. WHAT IS THE FULL QUOTE: We are learning more and more about less and less, until...?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Was this the book that had a brief story where a self styled reformist distributed greeting cards that said,

    HAVE NO MORE CURSING!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't know where the quote originally came from, but I see Flipswap cellphones have co-opted it,

    "Do more and more with less and less until you can do everything with nothing"

    Seems that Harris and Blanck subscribed to the same adage.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is always appalling to read how greedy manufacturers try to squeeze every last drop out of their workers. The sweat shops in Indonesia, China and Vietnam are no better than what you read in this account. Worse even. All we have managed to do is transport the same attitude abroad, which is why American unions find themselves with the short end of the stick.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Joesph Mitchell's"Up in the old Hotel" is a wonderful wonderful book.I heartily second Rick's thumbs up.And today the 29th would have been Chartres's 61st BDay so Happy BDay Mary!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Did some research and found that it was Mitchell's ''Up In the Old Hotel'' which had the story of that anti-cursing reformer -

    http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1996/winter/carrington-grammar/

    quote:

    ''a man who has devoted his life to the eradication of profanity''


    HAVE NO MORE CURSING

    ReplyDelete
  8. Where has Avrds been of late.Busy with her degree I hope.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!