What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City
Jennifer Toth · 267 pages
Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. This book is about them, the so-called "mole people" living alone and in communities, in the frescoed waiting rooms of long-forgotten subway tunnels and in pick-axed compartments below busway platforms. It is about how and why people move undergraound, who they are, and what they have to say
Sidewalk
Mitchell Duneier · 383 pages
"In Sidewalk, Mitchell Duneier takes us back to the streets of the Village, but finds a scene very different from the one Jacobs described. Much of the architecture remains, and many people live the way Jacobs suggested, but there is another population in the Village today - poor black men who make their livelihoods on the sidewalks by selling secondhand goods, panhandling, and scavenging books a
Direct Action: An Ethnography
David Graeber · 600 pages
Direct Action: An Ethnography offers a lengthy, traditional anthropological account of anarchist organizing efforts, with a focus on New York City’s Direct Action Network. For fellow researchers, he addresses the difficulties of using the narrative form and offers tips such as notetaking tools used (spiral notebook and rapidograph, a technical pen that eases hand-writing). Throughout, Graeber reco
Bossypants
Tina Fey · 277 pages
Tina Fey’s new book *Bossypants* is short, messy, and impossibly funny (an apt description of the comedian herself). From her humble roots growing up in Pennsylvania to her days doing amateur improv in Chicago to her early sketches on Saturday Night Live, Fey gives us a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of modern comedy with equal doses of wit, candor, and self-deprecation. Some of the funnie
Negroland
Margo Jefferson · 256 pages
Born in upper-crust black Chicago—her father was for years head of pediatrics at Provident, at the time the nation’s oldest black hospital; her mother was a socialite—Margo Jefferson has spent most of her life among (call them what you will) the colored aristocracy, the colored elite, the blue-vein society. Since the nineteenth century they have stood apart, these inhabitants of Negroland, “a smal
To Marry an English Lord
Gail MacColl, Carol Wallace · 403 pages
In 1895, nine American girls married peers of the British realm. It was the peak year of a social phenomenon that began when the entrenched members of old New York snubbed these "new money" families after the Civil War, sending them off to England in quest of class. MacColl presents a rich tapestry of essays, sidebars, fact-filled boxes, and lively anecdotes to chronicle the era respresnted by Dow
Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City
Choire Sicha · 240 pages
"What will the future make of us? In one of the greatest cities in the world, the richest man in town is the Mayor. Billionaires shed apartments like last season's fashion trends, even as the country's economy turns inside out and workers are expelled from the City's glass towers. The young and careless go on as they always have, getting laid and getting laid off, falling in and falling out of lov
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Samuel R. Delany · 203 pages
If one street in America can claim to be the most infamous, it is surely Forty-second Street. Once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers, and movie houses, Forty-second Street has been overwhelmed by the quest for safety - from safe sex and safe neighborhoods to safe cities and safe relationships. Now defined by corporate theme stores and large, neon-lit cafes, Forty-second Street has,
Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence, A True Story in Black and White
Geoffrey Canada · 124 pages
Presents a graphic adaptation of Geoffrey Canada's memoir of a Bronx, N.Y. childhood, along with an analysis of how a chain of events set in motion by 1960s drug laws has led to the child violence on the streets today.
The Golden House
Salman Rushdie · 384 pages
"A modern American epic set against the panorama of contemporary politics and culture--a hurtling, page-turning mystery that is equal parts The Great Gatsby and The Bonfire of the Vanities On the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of "the Gardens," a cloistered community in New York's Greenwich Village. The
Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success
Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig · 528 pages
"Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success" by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig is an investigative account of Donald Trump’s finances, drawing on decades of tax records, business documents, and insider testimony. The book argues that Trump’s public image as a self-made billionaire is largely a myth, built on vast financial support from his fa
Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA
Julia Alvarez · 288 pages
The bestselling author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents explores the phenomenon of the Latina ?sweet fifteen? celebrationThe quincea?era, the fifteenth birthday celebration for a Latina girl, is quickly becoming an American event. This legendary party is a sight to behold: lavish ball gowns, extravagant catered meals, DJs, limousines, and multi-tiered cakes. The must haves for a ?quince?
Little Gloria... Happy at Last
Barbara Goldsmith · 766 pages
Twilight Sleep
Edith Wharton · 372 pages
Out of print for several decades, here is Edith Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age, a critically praised best-seller when it was first published in 1927. Sex, drugs, work, money, infatuation with the occult and spiritual healing - these are the remarkably modern themes that animate Twilight Sleep. The extended family of Mrs. Manford is determined to escape the pain, boredom and empti
Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own
Kate Bolick · 308 pages
"A single woman considers her life, the life of the bold single ladies who have gone before her, and the long arc of slowly changing attitudes towards women"--
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
Bill Dedman, Paul Clark Newell Jr. · 456 pages
The rich mystery of a reclusive, eccentric heiress Huguette Clark: a true story of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance.
I Like It Like That
Cecily von Ziegesar · 201 pages
It's spring break and love is in the air. Or is that a blend of Chanel no. 9 and Gucci Rush? Is there a difference? Blair moves in with Serena and they're back to being best friends. But will the love-fest last or will they end up tearing out one anothers newly highlighted hair? And speaking of new, Nate is on the straight and narrow, playing Nate-in-shining-armor to his crazy new girlfriend, G
The Right Address
Carrie Doyle Karasyov, Jill Kargman · 157 pages
Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture
Carol Padden, Tom Humphries · 134 pages
Refusing to accept the limitations others have placed on the deaf, the authors -- themselves deaf -- argue for a deaf culture, one united by and expressed through the American Sign Language.
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Mary L Trump · 240 pages
Material World: A Global Family Portrait
Peter Menzel, Charles C. Mann · 255 pages
Driving the Saudis: A Chauffeur's Tale of the World's Richest Princesses
Jayne Amelia Larson

