Customer Reviews

Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s

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

 

 

I don't know why this awesome book has negative reviews here. It is a little difficult true. But for a New Yorkphile, like me, it can't be beat, if you want to know New York in the 1920's, and to a lesser degree the nation. All the familiar names are covered: Scott and Zelda, Woolcott, Parker, Gerstein Stein, Freud,Jazz and Ellington among many others. New York as a huge rush for outsiders from their first sight. The skyscraper boom, and builders and architects. The movie industry.The extreme dangers of transatlantic flights, and coast to coast mail deliveries. The Harlem Renaissance, basically the city as a reinventing, percolating tornado.FDR, Damon Runyan,Irving Berlin,WEB Dubois,Singing the Blues, Mary Pickford, Babe Ruth, Jimmy Walker (the fun loving mayor with questionable morals)the Great White Way, the Cotton Club...It is just about an endless ride thru this great town in the 1920's and beyond, including the aftershock of the 1930's...Sometimes a little difficult, but you can browse through the index too and find hundreds of worthy subjects to check out...One of the best journeys through a time and place that I know!! Also with some interesting photos too.

Remarkable book. My only complaint is that sometimes the details become overwhelming and the book loses its focus. That seems to be the product of its (maybe overly) ambitious scope. It bites off a lot but it also delivers a lot.

This book is close to horrible. The book says it is about Manhattan in the 1920s (or at least the subheading suggests this) but the book instead meanders through various issues that are slightly related to the 1920s and even more slightly related to manhattan. In almost 600 pages, the author does little more than confuse her reader. She talks about Freud, Hemingway, Stein, Crane, Jung, and numerous others, but your powers of reasoning really have to be used to figure out how these characters have any relevance to her supposed theme of Manhattan in the 1920s. She seems to have gotten lost in her own thoughts for the better part of the book. I'm sure there are some important points in this book, but it needs some major editing or to be broken into volumes.

Great overview with a solid literary / historical mix.

This book is a waste of money. I received it as a gift so I couldn't return it. It is full of historical mistakes and careless errors. It is not worth taking the time to point them out.