Customer Reviews

Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture

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

 

 

there simply isn't a better resource on the topic of nightclubs and other popular entertainment in NYC during this time. i highly recommend it.

There may not be a better source for the Nightlife of New York in the early 1900's but that doesn't mean this deserves 5 stars, that just means there's a very small and poorly developed material on this subject. The book is overly verbose to the point where it sounds like a creative writing teacher giving you an example of how not to engage your readers. I found myself extremely bored with the writing and often becoming distracted. I'm no slouch at reading either, I read 50+ books a year, not including school related books. This was still painful to read. The sentences were too close together on the page and the same stories were told over again with different people and places. You'll read multiple overly verbose accounts of how different restaraunts began catering to men and women, but there's no payoff to the reading. I don't even feel more informed after reading these accounts of how restaraunts become more lavish and the setbacks of plays catering to more than 1 class of people, I just feel drained. What should have been maybe a few essays totaling 50 pages was turned into a 270 page book and it did not end up well. I was nuetral towards New York nightlife in the past before reading this, but because of this book I now eschew the matter completely and hope never to hear or discuss it again.

There is an unfortunate dearth of books on the nightlife of NYC from the teens through the twenties. This book gives a decent general overview, but I wanted more specific names and dates of cabarets, tea dansants venues, revues and the eventual speakeasies. I am looking for owners, hours of operation, names of entertainers and when they performed, menues and descriptions of the actual rooms and buildings in which it all took place. Though interesting, I was not seeking a treatise on women's rights, and the "transformation of culture". Though well-written and at times thought-provoking, this book is two-thirds social history and only one-third about the actual venues and entertainers. The other review did not mention this, so I hope this will be helpful to someone like myself who is seeking the who, what's and when's more than the why's.