A book as effervescent and alive as the city itself, "My First New York" features candid accounts of coming to New York by more than fifty remarkable people who have called the city home. The contributors - a mix of actors, artists, comedians, entrepreneurs, musicians, politicians, sports stars, writers, and others - reflect an enormous variety of experiences. Few have arrived with less than filmmaker Jonas Mekas, a concentration-camp survivor on a UN refugee ship; few have swanned in with more than designer Diane von Furstenberg, a princess. And an extraordinary number managed to land in New York just as something historic was happening - the artist Cindy Sherman arrived in the middle of the Summer of Sam; restaurateur Danny Meyer came on the day John Lennon was shot. Arranged chronologically, these moving and memorable true stories combine to form an impressionistic history of New York since the Great Depression.Taken together, their stories are testaments to a larger revelation, one that new arrivals of all stripes and all eras have experienced again and again in New York, regardless of how the city proceeds to treat them: what the songwriter Rufus Wainwright calls having cracked the code of living life to the fullest.
Format:
CONTRIBUTORS: New York Magazine
EAN: 9780061963940
COUNTRY: United States
PAGES:
WEIGHT: 162 g
HEIGHT: 181 cm
PUBLISHED BY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
DATE PUBLISHED: 2012-08-20
CITY:
GENRE: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Artists, Architects, Photographers, HISTORY / Social History, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays
WIDTH: 127 cm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
US Northeast: Mid-Atlantic States, Individual artists, art monographs, Individual photographers, Individual architects and architectural firms, Biography: general, Biography: arts and entertainment, Biography: sport, Literary essays, Publishing industry and journalism, History of the Americas, Social and cultural history, Local history, Travel and holiday
"These small, glittering essays make a reader feel that the sheer force of all these dreams, this persistence, might in fact rub off on you." -- Los Angeles Times "No matter how rich and famous they become, newcomers generally suffer through the most absurd living conditions as a rite of passage to becoming New Yorkers. It's proven by the boldfaced contributors to My First New York." -- New York Post "A breezy celebration of the city... 50 famous residents describe their first days in the city-days variously exhilarating, overwhelming, terrifying, or inspiring, but invariably unforgettable." -- Booklist "As wacky and wonderful as NYC itself." -- Modern Tonic "At time hilarious and heartbreaking, all these stories are inspiring-just like life in NYC." -- Star "Celebrate[s] all the quirkiness, beauty, creativity, eccentricity, and artistry that is New York City." -- Pop Matters
Founded in 1968, New York magazine covers, analyzes, and defines the news, culture, and personalities that make New York City the capital of almost everything.
