• The best books on New York History - The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto
  • The best books on New York History - New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore
  • The best books on New York History - Slavery in New York by Ira Berlin & Leslie Harris (editors)
  • The best books on New York History - Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey
  • The best books on New York History - New York and Los Angeles by David Halle (editor)

The best books on New York History, recommended by Louise Mirrer

Like several of the great cities of the world, New York’s openness to people born elsewhere and relative tolerance lay at the foundation of its success, though darker episodes in the city’s 400-year history also need attention. Historian Louise Mirrer, President of the New-York Historical Society, recommends books that are essential to understanding the essence of the Big Apple.

  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965 by Dawn Powell
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - Queer Street by James McCourt
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - Instant Lives And More by Howard Moss, drawings by Edward Gorey
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - Cheap Novelties by Ben Katchor

Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers

‘The authors of these five books are people who came to New York for freedom – not so they could get rich, but so they could be free to pursue their interests and live their lives the way they wanted.’ New Yorker par excellence Fran Lebowitz recommends the writers who best capture her immutably mutable city.

  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Passing by Nella Larsen
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Cane by Jean Toomer
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - When Harlem Was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman

The best books on The Harlem Renaissance, recommended by William J. Maxwell

It was a golden age for American culture, a flourishing of Black literature, music and the arts that exploded in the 1910s and lasted through to the Great Depression. It was focused on Harlem, the area of New York City above Central Park, but its origins and its impact were much, much broader. William J. Maxwell, Professor of English and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, recommends some of the best books on the Harlem Renaissance.