In Around the Block, Tom Shachtman makes Adam Smith's "invisible hand" visible in the daily life of a number of small businesses in an ordinary, middle class block in New York City. Looking at The Block's economic life over the course of a year, Shachtman explores the everyday tragedies and triumphs hidden from view behind the shop windows and in offices. Behind the abstractions of economists, a single block in the Chelsea section of Manhattan is the stage for the personal commitments and risks of small business-a father commits suicide so that his business can avoid bankruptcy; a Korean liquor store owner finds himself caught between tow worlds; a computer game programmer leaves her job and risks her career for an idea of her own. Shachtman puts a human face on the challenges that businesses weather every day. We see how small business is integral to America's national health, responsible for job growth while building social ties in a country mired by polarization. In this very human story about work and community, Tom Shachtman writes not the economics of textbooks and graphs buth the stuff of our lives.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
Shachtman returns to the turf of his 1991 Skyscraper Dreams, the business world of New York City, for a study of one year in the life of an urban block. The block in Manhattan bounded by Seventh and Eighth avenues, and 17th and 18th streets is ``an ordinary block in an in-between neighborhood in the biggest city in the country,'' Shachtman writes. As such, it makes a surprisingly good lens through which to view three trends going on in urban America: increased urbanization, a growing polarization between rich and poor as the middle class is driven out, and a concentration of economic power in the hands of large chain stores. Each of these trends comes into play during the year covered here (April 15, 1993, to April 15, 1994). Shachtman uses the block's three large companies (Nynex, Cahners, and the fashion emporium Barney's) and over a hundred small ones to illustrate the effects of rising rents, increasing tax burdens, and rapid technological change. Along the way, he offers some profoundly moving vignettes: A lumber-company proprietor commits suicide rather than allow a bank to foreclose on his business; a Korean-born professional is making his way in the New World as a liquor-store owner; a gay video-store proprietor finds himself battling the behemoth Blockbuster chain. The personal lives of the men and women who own businesses become deeply implicated in their survival, as Shachtman richly illustrates. Finally, he offers a bold thesis, that it is the small businesses of American cities that engage in real job creation and are the heart of the nation's economy, and he proposes a series of changes in US banking and governmental practices designed to bolster them. Despite the limitations of his pedestrian prose style, Shachtman conveys the drama of simple daily life in New York small business, and no one who reads this will ever walk down a city street and see it in quite the same way again. (8 pages photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
The arrival of the big stores has been felt most keenly by small business owners, as the gains and losses of the large companies that dominate the healdlines reverberate in the neighborhoods. So what lies ahead in New York's economic upswing for the thousands of small businesses that have existed for years in middle-class neighborhoods?... Around the Block: The Business of a Neighborhood, provides half an answer, at best. -- The New York Times Book Review, David Gonzalez
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A different look at NYC.,
By Andre La Plume (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Around The Block: The Business of a Neighborhood (Hardcover)
This book looks at a single block (and it's environs) in New York City. Not the fashionable upper East and West sides, nor the business district, but an area in transition. An interesting take, one I plan to follow up on the next time I visit Manhattan, to see if any of the businesses mentioned still remain. Except for one chapter, the book moves quickly. I look forward to discovering the author's other books.
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