A Block in Time

A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street

De: Christiane Bird

Narrado por: Alex Picard

Duración: 13 h y 14 m

Resumen del Editor

Bloomsbury presents A Block in Time by Christiane Bird, read by Alex Picard.

Gotham meets The Island at the Center of the World in this dazzling history of a single block in Manhattan from the Age of Exploration to the present.

This is the story of New York City, told through the prism of one block, bordered by 23rd Street to the south, 24th Street to the north, Fifth Avenue and Broadway to the east and Sixth Avenue to the west. It’s a story of forest and cement, bird cries and taxi horns, theatres and factories, gambling dens and gourmet foods. It’s also the story of high life and low life, immigrants and tourists, farmers and aristocrats, crooked cops and moral reformers, toy stores and social climbers - from Solomon Pieters, a former slave who was the first owner of the block, to Alexander 'Clubber' Williams, the notorious police officer of the 1870s who accepted bribes and wielded his club with equal impunity, to Marietta Stevens, whose Sunday-night socials and scheming became the stuff of legend. Greed and generosity, guilt and innocence, extravagance and degradation - all have flourished on this one Manhattan block, emblematic of the city as a whole.

Venturing from the opulent halls of the Fifth Avenue Hotel to grimy Sixth Avenue brothels, from the era of the Lenape to that of the Dutch, from the Gilded Age to the 20th century, when the block and the city were transformed into something closely resembling the Manhattan we know today, A Block in Time takes us on a dynamic, exhilarating tour of history. Welcome to New York, past and present, and hear all the sordid and edifying stories this small patch of land has to tell.

©2022 Christiane Bird (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Enriched by Bird’s brisk character sketches and copious research, this is an entertaining and eye-opening snapshot of New York history." (Publishers Weekly)

"A lively account packed with memorable NYC characters.... Students of an ever changing Gotham will take pleasure in Bird’s well-researched narrative." (Kirkus Reviews)

"By deftly uncovering layer after layer of the history of just one city block in New York, Christiane Bird has created something altogether new: a kind of literary archaeology, rich with characters, incidents, and stories, from the Ice Age to the COVID-19 pandemic. I loved it." (Bill Hayes, author of Insomniac City)