Customer Reviews

The Almanac of New York City

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

(Reviewed Paperback version)

The main reason I'm writing this review is to include this link to the paperback version of this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231140630

For some reason, it doesn't appear when searching for "Almanac New York City" on the site. Since the hardbound version doesn't seem to be available, this is a reasonably priced alternative.

Now on to the contents.
Simply wonderful for the statistician. You kinda have to like "lists" of stuff for this to be meaningful to you. However, for NY'ers who've ever wondered the specific population of each borough and the ethnic breakdown of each, or the results of Mayoral elections for the last 150 years, or the Top 100 tallest buildings in the city. All of it is here, and great fun to simply flip through.

The authors were limited by space, so they needed to exclude some repetitive items, like weather temperature highs & lows for every day.
Understandable.
However, some of their charts could be improved in explanation and clarity. Such as Migration To and From specific Boroughs. For that, I'm bumping the rating down a star. The authors leave an email address for suggestions like that, and I'm sure they will receive a lot of suggestions for subsequent editions.

Like the book, and I am completely satisfied with the distributor who delivered what was promised....a great book in great condition! Thank you!

This has been a real help over the past 8 months, not just for finding a specific number but more ofter for keeping an accurate overview - when the papers present a new [to me] 'fact', the Almanac gives me comparative information against which I can judge the importance of the 'new' datum.
That said, it really isn't deep or broad enough for use in a news room or library. About 3 decades ago one of our colleges, The New School I think, published an excellent Folio-sized paperback that seemed to me to almost match the Statistical Abstract for detail, but my copy fell apart after 10 years heavy usage and, more importantly, it was never updated