The Encyclopedia of New York

by The Editors of New York Magazine

Overview

The must-have guide to pop culture, history, and world-changing ideas that started in New York City, from the magazine at the center of it all.

Since its founding in 1624, New York City has been a place that creates things. What began as a trading post for beaver pelts soon transformed into a hub of technological, social, and cultural innovation—but beyond fostering literal inventions like the elevator (inside Cooper Union in 1853), Q-tips (by Polish immigrant Leo Gerstenzang in 1923), General Tso’s chicken (reimagined for American tastes in the 1970s by one of its Hunanese creators), the singles bar (1965 on the Upper East Side), and Scrabble (1931 in Jackson Heights), the city has given birth to or perfected idioms, forms, and ways of thinking that have changed the world, from Abstract Expressionism to Broadway, baseball to hip-hop, news blogs to neoconservatism to the concept of “downtown.”

Those creations and more are all collected in The Encyclopedia of New York, an A-to-Z compendium of unexpected origin stories, hidden histories, and useful guides to the greatest city in the world, compiled by the editors of New York Magazine (a city invention itself, since 1968) and featuring contributions from Rebecca Traister, Jerry Saltz, Frank Rich, Jonathan Chait, Rhonda Garelick, Kathryn VanArendonk, Christopher Bonanos, and more. Here you will find something fascinating and uniquely New York on every page: a history of the city’s skyline, accompanied by a tour guide’s list of the best things about every observation deck; the development of positive thinking and punk music; appreciations of seltzer and alternate-side-of-the-street parking; the oddest object to be found at Ripley’s Believe It or Not!; musical theater next to muckracking and mugging; and the unbelievable revelation that English muffins were created on...West Twentieth Street. Whether you are a lifelong resident, a curious newcomer, or an armchair traveler, this is the guidebook you’ll need, straight from the people who know New York best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501166952
Publisher:	Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	39,876
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Founded by Clay Felker and Milton Glaser in 1968, New York was one of the earliest (and loudest) proponents of the New Journalism, launching the careers of Gloria Steinem, Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, and many others. More recently, New York has won thirty-six National Magazine Awards in the past two decades—more than any other magazine—and six General Excellence awards. The Washington Post has called it “the nation’s best and most imitated city magazine.”

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK

“Fans of the Big Apple will delight in this well-written, abundant and justly prideful collection... The editors convincingly argue that everything from abstract expressionism and the auteur theory to punk rock, Q-Tips, the teddy bear, toilet paper (and the urinal), and zoning regulations owes its origins to the five boroughs.” —Kirkus Reviews

PRAISE FOR HIGHBROW, LOWBROW, BRILLIANT, DESPICABLE: 50 YEARS OF NEW YORK MAGAZINE

“With irreverence and spunk, New York magazine has been around for half a century now. This very big book includes an oral history of the publication and a wide look at its greatest moments.” —New York Times Book Review

“When New York magazine began in 1968, it was unique: a brash conglomeration of ingenious writers, editors, and graphic designers who generated narrative journalism that was so classic it became new again. . . . Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: 50 Years of New York encapsulates those five convulsive decades in lavish illustrations, vivid oral histories, and evocative recreations by, among others, Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, Nicholas Pileggi, Julie Baumgold and Gael Greene from the magazine’s more than 2,300 issues.” —Sam Roberts, The New York Times

“A delicious compendium of the magazine’s coverage from the half-century of its existence, this is the kind of book that incites nostalgia even for the moments you didn’t live though (there’s the original Tom Wolfe “Radical Chic” cover!) and reminds us of the things that haven’t changed (an essay by a wife titled “I Need a Wife,” timely now and forever).” —Vogue

“Oversized, overstuffed . . . A great magazine is commemorated with an equally top-flight anthology. . . . The editors reproduce material that speaks not just to passing moments and fashions, but also to constant editorial emphases, such as high-quality artwork and portraiture. . . . History, local and global, unfolds in this fine gathering that represents a half-century and more than 2,300 issues.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“We tend to fetishize The New Yorker, but New York magazine has always been the publication that saw the city for what it is: big, brazen, and blustery. This oversized, beautifully-designed, 420-page book is barely big enough to contain its subject.” —Design Observer

From the Publisher

★ 01/01/2021

This work from the editors of New York Magazine details how innovation and ideas that germinate in New York City ultimately shape life and thought in the rest of the nation and the world. The book superbly details the Big Apple's evolution from a mercantile and manufacturing hub into the country's financial center and intellectual home for book publishers, fashion houses, art galleries, ad agencies, and media outlets. The layout is simple, with an introduction, a section of 121 milestones in the life of the city, and hundreds of brief, alphabetically arranged entries. Instead of a steady stream of historical and political personalities and events, the editors focus on the ways that creativity, imagination, and resourcefulness shaped the area's culture—from the I Love New York campaign to the development of hip-hop to the origin of the Oreo. The depth and variety of images, including cartoons, iconic pictures, magazine covers, and newspaper headlines, capture the city's character and make the book a standout. Though the book contains a wealth of subject matter for student reports, it's ideally suited for long browsing sessions. VERDICT A must purchase; those who love New York will adore it, and those less enamored with the Big Apple will still find this fun and informative encyclopedia a fascinating portrait of the metropolitan area.—Rob Tench, Old Dominion Univ. Libs., Norfolk, VA

Library Journal

2020-09-09
From the pastrami sandwich to TV comedy and Santa’s reindeer, a compendium of New York’s countless contributions to world culture.

If it didn’t happen in the five boroughs, it didn’t happen. That is to say, to trust the editors of New York, “even figuring out what belonged in this book made us realize what an innovation engine New York City has been.” Their enthusiasm sometimes leads them into the land of the spurious—they attribute the bagel, or “beigel,” to a baker by that name when it comes from the Yiddish word for stirrup, though they allow that the former attribution “is questionable.” Still, given the richness of New York inventions, the mass-distributed bagel among them, one can forgive the rare slip made in the name of exuberance. Take pastrami, for example, a Turkish way of cooking meat that found its way to New York in an immigrant’s repertoire and was then presented to a grateful municipality, a cheap cut of beef brisket corned, “then dry rubbed with spices, then wood smoked, and then eaten, enthusiastically.” Who was that immigrant? No one knows, and just which deli began to sell pastrami is a matter of controversy—and now, write the editors, “the Jewish deli is an increasingly rare bird in New York City owing to high rents, changing demographics, and a sense that using rendered chicken fat as liberally as others deploy ketchup may not be the best thing for a person.” More certain is pizza, imported from southern Italy and first sold on Spring Street in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi, and General Tso’s chicken, an import from Taiwan by way of New York’s Hunanese restaurants. Not all is food: The editors convincingly argue that everything from abstract expressionism and the auteur theory to punk rock, Q-Tips, the teddy bear, toilet paper (and the urinal), and zoning regulations owes its origins to the five boroughs.

Fans of the Big Apple will delight in this well-written, abundant and justly prideful collection.

Kirkus Reviews

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