by Editors of New York Magazine ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 2020
Fans of the Big Apple will delight in this well-written, abundant and justly prideful collection.
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.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6695-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Editors of New York Magazine
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
More About This Book
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
IndieBound Bestseller
by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
IndieBound Bestseller
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Steve Martin
BOOK REVIEW
by Steve Martin ; illustrated by Harry Bliss
BOOK REVIEW
by Steve Martin
BOOK REVIEW
by Steve Martin & illustrated by C.F. Payne
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.