Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York [Hardcover]

Michael W. Brooks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1997

Subway City explores New York's transit system as both fact and metaphor. Brooks traces the development of the subway from its inception as the newest and most efficient public transportation system to its decline as an overcrowded and dangerous part of city life. The crowded cars gave Harold Lloyd material for comedy, fueled William Randolph Hearst's crusade against the Traction Trust, and convinced Lewis Mumford that improved transit was a futile means of solving the city's problems. Brooks explores films which have dramatized the dangers lurking below ground, and examines the infamous Bernhard Goetz shooting that made the subway a symbol of urban malaise. More hopefully, he describes the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's station improvements and ambitious programs for Music Underground, Poetry-in-Transit, and Arts-in-Transit, as keys to the city's renewal. Brooks probes the image of the subway in the work of such artistic and literary figures as Reginald Marsh, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, Walker Evans, Tom Wolfe, Saul Bellow, Red Grooms, and Keith Haring. He uses the work of Isabel Bishop, Betty Smith, Minna Citron, and Donna Dennis to show how women have experienced the subway. And he shows how Langston Hughes, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and LeRoi Jones have used the subway to explore the city's racial tensions.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Throughout this century, the New York City subway has represented both the successes and failure of the modern city. Brooks (John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture, LJ 4/15/87) has written an eminently readable history of the New York City subway system and its impact on residents, politicians, and, in particular, artists and authors, from the earliest subway proposals and elevated railways in the 1860s through the depression and crime of the 1970s and 1980s. The comic films of Harold Lloyd, the political machinations of William Randolph Hearst, the paintings of Reginald Marsh, and the writings of James Baldwin have all reflected the influence of the subway. Brooks illustrates his work with many reproductions of newspaper cartoons, etchings, and woodcuts, and it contains extensive notes. This book will find an audience, both general and scholarly, among readers of history and popular culture.?Linda M. Kaufmann, Freel Lib., North Adams State Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press; 1ST edition (June 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813523966
• ISBN-13: 978-0813523965
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,981,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.