City Lights: Stories About New York (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: grand sheik, New York, Dan Barry, City Lights (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A perpetual tourist in his New York City hometown, Barry wrote a weekly New York Times column from 2003 to 2006 humanizing the faceless hordes of a bustling metropolis. He gives a voice here to umbrella peddlers grumbling about bad business in a downpour, a Buddhist monk robbed of his bag of humble possessions at Trump Tower and a Bronx poker champ whose winnings bought 10 heart surgeries in his native Guyana. In a city of transition, Fulton Fish Market hawkers bid adieu to their old stinky open-air digs; Plaza Hotel doormen lament the famed hotel's conversion into luxury condos and the probable loss of their jobs. Remarkable yet ordinary New Yorkers include a Methodist office worker who donated a kidney to a Muslim woman, a Harlem window washer who plummeted to his death in a Silk Stocking neighborhood and a potato chip salesman who was unmasked as a brutal Nazi. September 11 casts a long shadow as a Staten Island retired firefighter learns for the fifth time in two years that parts of his son, a commodities trader, have been recovered at ground zero. Pulitzer Prize–winner Barry delivers highly evocative pieces, but they'll be yesterday's news to Times readers. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Barry wrote a weekly column for the New York Times called "About New York," in which he covered in depth the people behind the news stories and in turn the stories behind the people. The short pieces, none more than a few pages, are collected here and organized not in chronological order but rather by such themes as "Vanishing New York" and "Seizing the New York Day." The result is a glowing collection of essays that sparkles and illuminates as much as the city it endeavors to capture. Barry writes sparingly about sentimental subjects: the loss of old New York businesses and the ensuing dent to the city's character; two former stars of a bygone era who meet twice a week to dance forgotten steps, or the Gatsbyesque character who posed as a member of the upper crust but was no such thing. Barry's subjects are mostly local heroes, residents of his great city just going about their business and occasionally doing something that makes them worthy of our contemplation. Readers will thank Barry for bringing these stories to their attention. Eberle, Jerry --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1 Reprint edition (March 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031253891X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312538910
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #755,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reveals the hidden soul of NYC, January 2, 2008

By	Daniel P. Cassidy "Jazzbo (Teasbach)" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: City Lights: Stories About New York (Hardcover)

Whenever I read the NY Times over the past few years and became despairing of the state of the world and humanity, I always knew I could turn to Dan Barry to "pull me up." Barry's collection of columns are really prose poems, filled with soul and spirit of the Hidden New York City: cello playing bus drivers, workin' stiffs, everyday Janes and Joes, whose lives Barry illuminates with a style that is a pleasure to read again and again. These columns were my daily vitamins. Rereading them in this collection is truly a revelation that the spirit of the common people is what gives NY and America its uncommon soul. Buy this book. Then buy another and give it to a friend. Read it and feel renewed. It will "pull you up" too.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best of All That's Fit to Print, December 23, 2007

By	paquinn47 "QED" (new york) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Lights: Stories About New York (Hardcover)

It's the Sunday before Christmas. First thing this morning, pre-coffee, pre-bowel movement/ablutions, pre-church, I went into the front yard to retrieve my copy of the New York Times. I knew the pages would be filled with column after column of depressing dispatches from Darfur, Wichita, Whereveristan, mass homicide, sub-prime scandal, suicide bombing, official doublespeak about why torture is a crime except when practiced by CIA/Blackwater, the inexhaustible ineptitude/fathomless arrogance of the Bush administration, and opposing platitudes/feckless fulminations by Frank Rich.
God's mercy on us all.
I didn't rescue the Times from pelting rain and soot-ridden snow, however, in order to batter my wounded/aged soul with the alarming/ deteriorating condition/direction of our country/world. My intent was to turn immediately to Dan Barry's latest report from the homeland/ hinterland and to see what redeeming/enlightening observations had come from the pen/laptop/PC of the single-most powerful, poetic, sublime columnist at work at this moment in these Disunited/Dispirited States. (And, caveat lector, Dan Barry is not to be confused with satirist Dave Barry.)
I wasn't disappointed by what I read. One again, I was amazed. (I almost wrote "astounded," except that the end piece in the NYT Book Review of several months ago by Joe Quinlan--a satirist every bit as good as Dave Barry and a lot more savage--has rendered that word verboten by anyone attempting a review.) Here in the face of yet another merciless deadline, Dan Barry had managed to pinpoint a revealing angle on a familiar story (check it out for yourself, "A Place Just like Every Other Place. Only Not," 12/23/07) and produce a precisely chiseled, exquisitely faceted journalistic gem of finely cut reporting and lyrically evocative writing.
My original introduction to Dan Barry's writing was in his "About New York" columns, a selection of which is reproduced in his newest book, CITY LIGHTS. Barry's predecessors in this spot included the newspaper equivalent of Gerhig/Ruth or Mantle/Maris (Yankee fans, take your pick)--the inimitable Meyer Berger and the nonpareil Francis X. Clines. Barry has not only matched their achievement but set a whole new standard, producing column after column that exposes/celebrates/ investigates/ mourns/explores the incessant/inexhaustible tragedy/comedy/ soap opera/ burlesque/masque that unfolds in New York each and every day.
I'm sure that I read every single column in CITY LIGHTS when it first appeared in the Times. But as I read and re-read this book, I'm astounded (sorry, Joe Quinlan) anew by how utterly fresh/invariably perceptive/carefully observed each and every article is. Years from now, this book will be taught in journalism schools (if such institutions still exist) and devoured by historians (if such a profession still exists) interested in what life was really like in New York during the first decade of the 21st century. Those who are neither collectors nor teachers nor historians will simply keep it by their bedsides, reading it over again, a story at a time, to remind themselves of the dignity/ intensity/complexity of life as lived by Gotham's extraordinary/ ordinary people.
Attention book collectors: At some point, Dan Barry will be awarded the Pulitzer Prize--why he didn't get it for his reporting from New Orleans on the consequences on Katrina, eludes me--which will make this book especially valuable. Non-collectors also take notice. If you simply love great writing, buy this book. If you're fascinated by New York, buy this book. If you're bewitched/bothered/intrigued by the human condition, buy this book. And if none of the above categories applies, but you love to read anything by Alice McDermott, buy this book. Her introduction is worth the price of admission. CITY LIGHTS will endure as long as New York does.(And if journalism ain't your cup of tea but you want to imbibe THE BEST memoir to come out of suburban New York, get a copy of Barry's PULL ME UP.) Thank you, Dan Barry.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Little Ole New York...", March 7, 2008

By	Big D (Auburn, AL. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Lights: Stories About New York (Hardcover)

Dan Barry writes about New York as if it was a village. Its size is not as important as the individuals who live there, the people who inhabit it, make it the alive, vibrant and wonderfully alluring city it is.

This is not about New York, the city. It is about the flesh and blood of the city, about the people and characters of the city, and it's hard to imagine a city anywhere that has more characters and color to write about than New York City. Dan Barry does a good job of capturing their individuality, their uniquenss and their inevitable ties and bonds to the city.

Obviously, this review is written by an unabashed lover of NYC...and from Alabama, too.