As a lifelong New Yorker, I was intrigued, curious, and nervous. I was not familiar with Craig Taylor's work before reading this, but I loved it! I loved the style, the stories, everything.

This book is a collection of interviews with New Yorkers from all kinds of backgrounds. It is arranged by themes like buildings, crime, and even the pandemic. Without photos, it's not quite as engaging as HONY, and if you are a podcast person you may find it harder to read interviews, but it's a fascinating collection nonetheless.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

3.5 This book was good, I really loved that you got such a cool insight in New Yorkers while getting to read their stories. Especially in the time of COVID, its crazy to see how people perceive the city through their own views. I am not much of a non-fiction reader but I enjoyed it.

Thank you to Netgalley and W. W. Norton & Company for e-arc for an honest review!

I love New York City. As much as someone can love a city, but not particularly want to live or visit there. I love reading about NYC history. I am interested in learning about the city’s varied cultures and neighborhoods. Everyday people’s stories fascinate me the most, so this book seemed to be right up my alley.

Overall, this book met my expectations of what I thought it would be. I was hoping for stories of how New York used to be in the “old days”/how things have changed over the years, stories about why New York is so special to people, and stories of normal people just living in the city and trying to make a life for themselves. This book brought all of those things in spades.

Each chapter had a theme that the stories in that chapter would be about. Within each chapter there would be about four or five stories told by NY residents that go with the theme. The stories were transcribed from recorded voice, so it seemed like the person was talking directly to the reader. There were three different interludes throughout the book where the author tells his story of meeting and befriending Joe, an individual experiencing homelessnes, throughout his time living in the city. Some standout chapters were Pandemic City, Non-stop Hustle, and Building Stories.

Pandemic City was the most affecting section, to me. It tells the story of Dan Bauso, a personal injury lawyer from Queens, and his experience testing positive for COVID and then being hospitalized for almost a week in Long Island Jewish Hospital (LIJH). It also included interviews with Amy Hughes (a nurse at a different hospital and Bauso’s ex-wife) and Joann O’Sullivan (LIJH nurse who took care of Bauso and other COVID patients). His hospitalization happened right at the beginning of quarantine and already the hospital ICU was full and it was all hands on deck. I liked the insight to what the nurses were experiencing (emotionally and physically) when treating COVID patients and insight into what it felt like to be a COVID patient in New York City. Also, Dan Bauso (who is in other chapters as well) is delightful and I would pay to have him take me on a tour of NYC like he did with the author.

The author interviews a very diverse cross section of people for this book. Their perspectives and circumstances are from every end of the spectrum. There were some stories that I skipped over because they weren’t as interesting to me, but it was only a few. This book is a quick read. Most of the stories aren’t overly long or rambling, but the ones that are add to the interviewee’s character. This book is good for anyone wanting to get a taste of what everyday NYC residents are like in real life. I would recommend anyone with an interest in NYC culture and/or history told from an insider’s perspective pick up this book.

What a great collection of real-life stories about New Yorkers. Having come from abroad, I’ve always been fascinated by New York and everything it represents to many – hopes and dreams, status and prestige, a must-visit place before you die, a place of good food and pizzas. Yes pizzas. (Didn't know there was a job such as a pizza tour guide until I read this book!)

Diving into these stories, it opened my eyes, that living in New York, is a lot like city-living, like in my case, back home, it’s Kuala Lumpur. I liked how the author described it, that, “New York meant more of everything. More joy, more sorrow, more pleasure, more pain. More experience, more possibilities to find love, more wealth, and a poverty with more of a sharp, punitive edge.” And in another paragraph, “Still it just felt like the city held more: more elevators, more LED lights, more nail salons, more rats, more bridges.” How true that city life is certainly more of everything, so much so that living there can be overwhelming, like how a dance producer described it, “In New York, you’re in a million situations a day where you have to adjust your body to the reality of the situation.” But then again, living where the hustle and bustle is, gives you privacy too, because people are too busy with their own lives to be bothered with yours. Again from the dance producer, he said, “When things matter a lot to you, sometimes it’s nice to be in a world that doesn’t care. It’s relieving.”

A doctor said, “This city will drain you out of your last dollar. With no remorse, it ain’t no, ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s just, ‘Bye, thank you for this money, have a good time. Come back. Holler at me when you get your next paycheck, or when you get your next dollar. I’d be glad to take it.” Cruel, but real. A recent arrival in NYC, shared the same opinion too, “It’s a nonstop hustle.”

A private cook thanked poverty for teaching him survival, he “can go in somebody’s fridge and see what they’ve overlooked and create a meal out of it. But he also had to deal with racism, being judged for his skin color and how he looked. One of his client described him as “chef was full of tattoos. I felt like he was gonna rob the place.” And clients rejecting him after realizing he wasn’t white.

For immigrants, New York meant hope and possibilities. A security guard at the Statue of Liberty, Justin Gonzalez, who could speak multiple languages for ‘belt, watch, wallet, cell phone, camera, keys, coins’ who shared what he learned of immigrants, that how happy they were when they saw the Statue of Liberty, the ‘symbol of freedom’, from their boat, “They would be dancing, they would be singing. Like, ‘Oh, we made it to America. Now we’re free. Now we can start a new life.” For Yesenia Mejia, a house cleaner who arrived from El Salvador, never thought snow was real until she saw it, and how much she wanted her family to join her in the US to build a new life for themselves, because of how bad the situation back home was – from making a living to surviving the guerillas. It took her four years to save up and pay $12000 for her two daughters.

There were some stories that had me longing for more, only to realize their story had ended, rather abruptly. To name some, like the singer Frank Senior, who relied on his seeing-eye dog and sense of hearing to get around the city, the window cleaner Marvin Abrams, a former cab driver Zack Arkin (cab drivers’ stories are always some of the most interesting!) it felt like their stories had so much potential to teach but was cut short, and a few, I thought dragged on for a little too much. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed most of the stories in here.
It was so interesting to see how each individual from different backgrounds spoke so differently about New York – from their perspectives, to their word choices and what they appreciated or disliked. Topics covering the hustlers, views of people who work for or associated with the rich (I really enjoyed this; an eye opener!) the ones who were born there, right there in the city, or those who immigrated hoping for a better life, racism and injustice, and so much more. New York is indeed really a city of more.

I also loved the interludes, those coming from Craig’s perspective, which felt so honest, open and inspiring, especially his friendship with Joe, someone he met where he volunteered at St Francis Xavier every Sunday afternoon.

People go to New York, work there, live there, do so for many different reasons. From their stories, despite the hardships and hustles, complaints and resignations, there was always love and admiration for the city, warts and all.

I’ll end this review with a quote from Jaiquan Fayson, a painter, who described New York as: “New York is less of a melting pot and more of a mosaic. It’s really like different colored tiles, and different people being who they are.”

For those who love New York or have long been intrigued by this city, this is definitely a must-read!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine.

I felt like I was in New York. From the hustle, to the past, to politics, to immigrants, to NASDAQ, to the COVID-19 pandemic, to life and death, New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time encompassed it all. Taylor does an incredible job in his execution of each story. He conveys anger, frustration, heartbreak, and happiness so well, I found myself laughing one moment and crying the next. You meet people from an array of fields-- from 911 responders, far right and far left individuals, landlords, renters, undocumented immigrants, repairmen, activists, nurses on the frontlines, lawyers, patients, and more. When first thinking of the city, it can be easy to forget how integral these individuals are in the cog that is New York, and Taylor's back-to-back contrast of these dualities (e.g. back-to-back stories of far right and far left individuals, landlords to renters, nurse to patient). I would recommend this book to fans of Humans of New York and anyone interested in learning about the many lenses of our society.

Craig Taylor’s concept to create a representation of New York using New Yorkers’ lived experiences and passing conversations creates a vast smorgasbord of topics, discussions, and information which represents the events which have built the city into what it is today. The main topics are separated into parts, such as wealth inequality, pandemic woes, culture, etc. Within these sections goes deeper into smaller yet memorable experiences which do not necessarily fit all of New York’s beliefs or experiences. Taylor does a great job of showing how diverse New York’s ideologies and lifestyles can be, and how the city has been changing.

When reading the book, I found the order of certain stories very hit or miss. There would be great transitions from the concluding story in a section to the next part, and then there would be stories of the aftermath of police officers experiencing 9/11 following nurse stories about the Covid-19 pandemic. While I certainly don’t need a chronological telling of events, there should be strong thematic significance to why an order is written the way it is. I also felt as though the more memoir parts of the book were sparse enough to feel disconnected from the overall message of the piece.

The aspect I liked most about this nonfiction collection was that it allows the reader to read and come up with their own conclusions about what New Yorkers are and represent within its pages. Taylor is simply the medium which New York shares its stories; rather than an interpreter or present day historian. What results is a refreshingly authentic experience which gives the reader plenty to think about at the end of each anecdote.

This book provided a very interesting look at New York from the point of view of those who live there. Craig Taylor does a great job of really painting a picture of what modern day New York looks like. The variety of voices that he gets to speak in this piece are great, each of them having been in the city a different period of time and a different perspective. The drawback to me is that this book was formatted very differently than I expected and it was a little jarring switching between people, as he crams so many interview subjects into the book. That being said, this is a truly interesting and lovely piece that really gets to the beating heart of New York.

I really loved the tone of this book. As a reader (and New Yorker!) always looking to capture that atmosphere of the city, this was a perfect match for me. Really interesting to see how Taylor managed to weave together all of the elements that makes New York and it’s inhabitants so resilient. I loved reading about migratory impact of the years and how the subcultures of the city have come to be. It made me want to take a closer look and engage with the city and all it has to offer, even more. I’ve already begun to seek out other writing from this promising journalist.

As dizzying a spectacle as the city itself, Craig Taylor’s NEW YORKERS is a fixed record of the fleeting present, a curated selection of those numberless “stories in the Big City”. If you’ve scrolled through Humans of New York, you’ll relish the chance to get beyond the photos. Some stories stand me in awe of the city, and some of them make me very glad I don't live there. People make their living getting nits and lice out of people's hair because the pests have evolved to resist remedies that work elsewhere—no thank you! But maintaining a midcentury World’s Fair scale model of the entire city in a Queens museum? That sounds like a fascinating job.

You’ll meet homeless New Yorkers, and you’ll meet an elevator repairman who has seen how many empty spaces the city holds, enough to house everyone in the city, except the landlords are trying to keep up their reputation by keeping the rents too high to fill the building.

You’ll meet, one after the other, a “cop” who prides himself on not being a “police officer” (his badly-motivated co-workers), and then a trans Latina who sees the whole NYPD as a lethal danger to her and a lot of other people, unaccountable to any real justice—and then a far-right militia member who makes excuses for old racists and says “a black” shot his friend.

You’ll meet a personal injury lawyer who waxes rhapsodic about arranging for the author to accidentally trip and fall over an officially documented crack in the sidewalk, and how eloquently he would describe the author’s face as maimed, tragically disfigured!, you know, hypothetically. You’ll meet the mother of a man who’s incarcerated at Rikers Island, and an ex-con who did time there, and a car thief who’s still on the outside.

NEW YORKERS is only a tiny sample of the fascinating lives in New York City, of course. But that’s all the more reason to savor every story. I did. And I can tell you, if I ever get up to New York City again, I’m gonna savor every slice on a Scott’s Pizza Tour (Chapter 8, “Life is a Parade”). That’s a thing that exists in New York. Because of course it does. It’s New York.

I am grateful to NetGalley for a free advance copy.