About this Item
Paperback. Dan Barry approaches New York from every angle, finding surprise in the familiar, beauty in the rusted, ruined, or paved-over, and intimacy between strangers thrown together by circumstance. Whether visiting the Fulton Fish Market on the day of its closing, watching octogenarian dancers as they re-capture the grace of their youths, or talking to cops, rabbis, hatmakers, bartenders, doctors, boat captains, cabdrivers, engineers, barbers, and other about their jobs and lives, Barry brings the eye of the journalist and the soul of a poet to everything he writes. Presents New York from various angles, finding surprise in the familiar, beauty in the rusted, ruined, or paved-over, and intimacy between strangers thrown together by circumstance. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780312538910
Bibliographic Details
Title: City Lights (Paperback)
Publisher: Griffin Publishing, California
Publication Date: 2009
Binding: Paperback
Condition: new
Edition: 1st Edition
About this title
With a poet's clear eye and a journalist's curiosity about how a city works, Dan Barry shows us New York as no other writer has seen it.
Evocative, intimate, piercing, and often funny, the essays in City Lights capture everyday life in the city at its most ordinary and extraordinary. Wandering the city as a columnist for The New York Times, Barry visits the denizens of the Fulton Fish Market on the eve of its closing; journeys with an obsessed guide through the secret underground of abandoned subway stops, tunnels, and aqueducts; touches down in bars, hospitals, churches, diners, pools, zoos, memorabilia-stuffed apartments, at births and funerals, the places where people gather, are welcomed, or depart; talks to the ex-athlete who caught the falling baby, the performance artist who works as a mermaid, the octogenarian dancers who find quiet joy in their partnership, and the guy who waves flags over the Cross-Bronx Expressway to wish drivers safe passage.
Along the way, Barry offers glimpses of New York's distant and recent past. He explains why the dust-coated wishbones hanging above the bar at McSorley's Old Ale House belong to the doughboy ghosts of World War I. He recalls a century of grandeur at the Plaza Hotel through the tales of longtime doormen who will soon be out of a job. He finds that an old man's quiet death opens back into a past that the man had spent his life denying. And, from the vantage of the Circle Line cruise around Manhattan, he joins tourists as they try to make sense of still-smoldering ruins in Lower Manhattan three weeks after September 11, 2001.
Each story in City Lights illuminates New York, as it was and as it is: always changing, always losing and renewing parts of itself, every street corner an opportunity for surprise and revelation.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Store Description
We guarantee the condition of every book as it's described on the Abebooks web sites. If you're dissatisfied with your purchase (Incorrect Book/Not as Described/Damaged) or if the order hasn't arrived, you're eligible for a refund within 30 days of the estimated delivery date. If you've changed your mind about a book that you've ordered, please use the Ask bookseller a question link to contact us and we'll respond within 2 business days.
Please note that titles are dispatched from our UK and NZ warehouse. Delivery times specified in shipping terms. Orders ship within 2 business days. Delivery to your door then takes 8-15 days.
Payment Methods
accepted by seller