Customer Reviews

The Subway and the City: Celebrating a Century

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Whether you love or hate the subway, you'll love "The Subway and the City" by Stan Fischler. This is a great read -- and adventurous ride -- focusing on the growth of the New York subway system over the past 100 years -- and how the subway helped make New York become one of the greatest ethnically diverse urban communities in the world. Full of historic and vintage photos chronicling the building of the subway. Once you open its pages, you won't be able to close this handsome hard cover book until you've reached the last stop on Page 568!

This book was published as part of the official centennial of the New York Subway system back in 2004, but it differs from the traditional history book approach. Instead of a dry and linear recitation of facts and figures from 1904 to 2004, Fischler weaves in his own lifetime of memories of riding the rails from borough to borough. His personal recollections range from watching the construction of a subway station literally under his own house as a six-year old during the extension of one of the lines, making family pilgrimages to relatives' houses, Broadway plays and various sporting events, all the way to taking his own children to the Subway Museum in Brooklyn as they grew up.

The book is filled with many old photographs of stations, elevated lines and all of the versions of rolling stock that have been a part of the first one hundred years. Although the book seems to jump around from topic to topic and is sometimes hard to follow, the personal anecdote-style gives it a warmth not matched in many historical reviews. If you have a love for the New York Subway system, you are sure to enjoy this book from a native New Yorker and lifetime straphanger.

This is an incredibly deep adventure into every corner of the greatest subway system in the world, told by someone who knows it better then anyone. A great read and a great historical document.

A great history of NYC and its subways - I highly recommend it.

I really am enjoying this book and recommend you who are reading this buy it immediately and ask your library to buy it. if you are a train, subway or historical NYC buff, you will be amazed at the number of great photographs and details. Mr. Fischler, when you get a chance to edit this, please add on every chapter heading, the borough. No one starts with page one. We skip around first and we don't have your encyclopedic knowledge of locations. Also, map a little legend supered on each photo, an indicator symbol of the approximate NESW direction, the year if you know it, and the borough. It would make the experience of reading the book even more enjoyable, if that is possible! Thank you for what is obviously a great gift to us.

FOR THOSE PEOPLE LIKE ME WHO LOVES TO READ ABOUT THE HISTORY OF TRANSPORTATION IN NEW YORK WILL FIND THIS BOOK A FASCINATING READ. JUST THE PHOTOGRAPHS ALONE: COMPARING YOUR PARTICULAR NEW YORK CITY NEIGHBORHOOD THEN AND NOW IS BOTH NOSTALGIC AS WELL AS STARTLING TO SEE HOW MUCH HAS THE CITY EVOLVED IN SO SHORT A TIME AS ONLY 100 YEARS. MR. FISCHLER'S PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF HIS TRAVELS THROUGHOUT THE SUBWAY SYSTEM BEGINING AS A CHILD I COULD DEFINITELY RELATE TO, BECAUSE,LIVING IN MANHATTAN MY FAMILY TOO USED THE SYSTEM TO GET AROUND TO VISIT. HIS STORIES ARE VERY PERSONAL, PLEASING, AMUSING AND INFORMATIVE. I'M VERY PLEASED I "FOUND" THE VOLUME; THE FIRST TIME I ENCOUNTERED IT IN A BOOKSTORE I HESITATED IN PURCHASING IT BECAUSE OF PRICE. I HAD TO WAIT 3 YEARS BEFORE MY EYES CAUGHT IT AGAIN, AND THIS TIME FOR GOOD!! IF YOU ARE A SUBWAY BUFF, THEN "SUBWAY AND THE CITY" WILL BE A MOST WELCOME ADDITION.