How the Other Half Lives

By: Jacob Riis

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

How the Other Half Lives was a pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future muckraking journalism by exposing the slums to New York City's upper and middle class. How The Other Half Lives quickly became a landmark in the annals of social reform. Riis documented the filth, disease, exploitation, and overcrowding that characterized the experience of more than one million immigrants. He helped push tenement reform to the front of New York's political agenda, and prompted then-Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to close down the police-run poor houses. Roosevelt later called Riis "the most useful citizen of New York". Riis's idea inspired Jack London to write a similar expos on London's East End, called People of the Abyss.

Public Domain (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Early Muckraking to a Fault

A title from 1890 is sure to fall on deaf ears for most listeners. Riis has a way to bring out the most lurid facets of poverty stricken NYC which personally I find very interesting. His own stereotypes and racism will sure rub a contingent of people the wrong way but it is best to hear it in the way he intended. The narrator did a great job at capturing that with the absolutely non-PC accents. A quicker listen than most that can take you back to a time most would probably rather sweep under the rug.

Mini series please

I would love to see this book, turned into a miniseries much in the way that masters of the air has been turned.

Great trip back in time

A look into history from when it was happening. The narrator fits this book perfectly.

Of Historical Interest

Writing style is very “wordy“. Could have benefited from a better narrator. This particular man reads forcefully; in a raspy voice. He adds nothing to interpretation and mispronounces too many words for my taste.

great history

found the book to be a great history lesson on the late 19th century U.S

. the similarities of the lower middle and upper class to today's political and class issues are astounding and I opening.

Good information

Informative, detailed, profound. Not edge-of-your-seat kind of story but does provide great imagery of the era and peoples of which it writes.

Classic... Brings one into the depths of Poverty..

America has much history just sitting on shelves and an even more amount swept under the rug. Worth listening to thrice, possibly even worth having in physical form.

A Masterpiece Recovered

I am, perhaps unwisely, writing this review before finishing the book, but I felt eager to proclaim it a revelation. I've read Riis before, but found it quite spellbinding to listen to the work, which is one of the great portraits of the city. Riis gives the sort of memorable character to New York's buildings and streets that Dickens gave to the residents of London. By today's standards his work is an odd blend of journalism, lore, data mining, and Victorian anthropology. Neither sociology nor maudlin reformism. The stereotypes may offend the sensitive, but are equitably distributed. While any graduate student can easily critique, deconstruct, or even psychoanalyze him, Riis truly stands on his own. While he is not Engels, the facts and descriptions make a vivid account of the problems that gave rise to the American Progressive Movement, and I would grant them a certain status as literature or art, especially if you look at his entire body of work along with the innovation of the flash photographs. What is surprising is how well the audio version stands up here without the photographs. Indeed, the famous images have had the effect of burying the writing. The reader does a good job, but his rough American drawl has a character of its own and may not be to everyone's taste. I might have preferred some attempt to replicate Riis's own voice, which I have always imagined as clipped, ironic, and heavily Danish. Though I have not yet finished as of this review, I can see that the book might drag without an overarching theme or natural narrative. Still, I would highly recommend it as a vital work of American journalism, history, and literature. And it a surprisingly colorful, interesting listen minus its celebrated photos. Actually, if might be nice to add the photos for an accompanying iPod slideshow.

Great book! Terrible narration

What a fascinating look into life in the slums of NYC at the beginning of the 20th century. The narrator, however, is awful. He puts emphasis on the wrong parts of sentences and continuously mis-pronounces words. It is distracting.

Pure History

What Jacob Riis does here is illuminate the reader as to conditions suffered by New York's poor population. From photographs, Riis constructs a narrative of New York's most hellish areas and at once, reveals the motivation for its inhabitants (mostly new immigrants) to improve themselves, their condition, and their place in America by moving up and out into mainstream America. Acknowledging the dichotomy between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, more than a few widows, fatherless boys, and orphans succumb to the mean streets of Lower Manhattan, while others are packed away on trains to be whisked to the safety of the West.

Riis takes notice of both the people of New York, as well as the built environment showing how community (Chinatown, Jewtown, Little Italy, and Bohemia) and structure (the Tenements, Cheap Lodging-houses, and the Bend) combine to produce an environment that motivates idealist dreamers, imprisons those that capitulate to its horrors, and crushes the weak and weary.

This is the story of American immigrants. Hard working, oppressed, abused, and ill-treated, but determined to make life a better place for their children, if not themselves. Riis pulls no punches when discussing ethnic groups, their behavior, and the vices that correlate with their condition.

Highly recommended.