Radical Walking Tours of New York City [Paperback]

Bruce Kayton (Author), Pete Seeger (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2003

Traditional walking tours of New York enshrine the wealthy and war heroes by emphasizing what they’ve left behind. Rarely seen are those buried in their wake—those who fought the power, pushing for a better world. In Radical Walking Tours of New York Bruce Kayton leads us to monuments of those other heroes.
Through Kayton’s lens, the history of all hitherto existing neighborhoods is the history of class struggles, civil rights battles, and labor movements; these twelve tours provide as many exciting, provocative, and educational afternoons.
You can visit, for instance, Emma Goldman’s long-time home in the East Village, Langston Hughes’s house in Harlem, the site of Mabel Dodge’s salon o the apartment in which John Reed worked on Ten Days That Shook the World, and the site of Margaret Sanger’s first birth control clinic.
From Battery Park to Harlem, from the Lower East Side to Central Park, Bruce Kayton’s tours provide a new perspective on the history of both New York City and American radicalism.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

BRUCE KAYTON has been a political activist for over thirty years. He has appeared on National Public Radio, WNYC-Radio and WBAI-Radio, and taught at the New School University and the Jewish Radical Education Project. His Radical Walking Tours Web site (http://www.he.net/~radtours) receives more than 10,000 hits per year. Kayton lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press; 2 edition (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583225544
• ISBN-13: 978-1583225547
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,115,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating As Browsing History or NY Introduction, July 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Radical Walking Tours of New York City (Paperback)

I've tried several of Bruce's actual Radical Walking Tours, which he still conducts in person. He researches, writes and organizes his work better, or more consistently, than he sometimes delivers it in person. But they are always stimulating as social history, leftist political history, labor and industrial history, and even humor. Easily among the best tours I've tried here in NYC and I've tried several.

Many "stops" in his tours have changed my very sense of certain NYC blocks & neighborhoods.

This book is also fascinating browsing history as well as one of the coolest specialty travel guides I've looked over. Good for new and veteran New Yorkers alike.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars you don't have to be a radical to enjoy this book, June 18, 2006

By 

M. S. Cohen (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Radical Walking Tours of New York City (Paperback)

This is a guidebook with a hard left political point of view on absolutely everything (as in communist or anarchist, not liberal). Not to be alarmed, however. My evaluation of the book is especially for those, like me, who do NOT share these views. Rather than off-putting, I found Kayton's historical comments to be concise, virtually always intersting, and highly relevant to an appreciation of the neighborhoods in question. The Greenwhich Village walk, for ecample, focuses on sites that have been the homes of famous leftists (John Reed, Emma Goldman, the Rosenbergs), left-leaning writers (Edna St. Vincent Millay), alleged bad guy capitalists (Mayor Jimmy Walker, Mayor Ed Koch), as well as important places in the history of labor (the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), abolitionism, civil rights, gay rights (the Stonewall Inn demonstrations), and anti-war protest. The slice of New York history that these places represent comes alive from a perspective that resembles the participants'. Finally, Kayton's humor and energy more than outweigh the silliness of some of his views. I recommend it if you're looking for something different.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, October 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Radical Walking Tours of New York City (Paperback)

I wanted more information on the events and places than he provided. No doubt that Mr. Kayton is a terrific tour guide and NYC needs more scholarly guides; the typical guide in this great city is HORRENDOUSLY inept and ignorant. Other parts of the city, aside from the Lower East Side and Villages should have been covered - I can't imagine that no radical never called Murray Hill, Times Square, Turtle Bay, etc., home.