Name: Gotham
ISBN: 9780195140491

Gotham

To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe. In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge…

What Hacker News says

bob_theslob646Dec 2017

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> Grant

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> Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy

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> The Best Investment Writing, Volume 1: Selected Writing From Leading Investors and Authors

by Meb Faber (editor),‎ Jason Zweig (contributor),‎ Patrick O’Shaughnessy (contributor),‎ Morgan Housel (contributor),‎ Corey Hoffstein (contributor),‎ Barry Ritholtz (contributor)

> Janesville

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> The Man Who Could Be King

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> Born to Run

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> The Content Trap

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> Shoe Dog

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> Attitude: Develop a Winning Mindset on and off the Court

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> The Euro and the Battle of Ideas

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> 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy

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> Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change

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> Bellevue

David Oshinsky

> The Woman Who Smashed Codes

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> Stealing Fire

Steven Kotler

> Hit Refresh

Satya Nadella

> Thank You for Being Late

Thomas Friedman

> Supernormal

Meg Jay

> The Inevitable

Kevin Kelly

> Economics for the Common Good

Jean Tirole

> It’s What I Do

Lynsey Addario

> Gotham: 1898-1919

Mike Wallace

> The Good Daughter

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freshyillNov 2014

This is the very first topic covered in, well, Gotham. If you're interested in the history of New York City, it's a great book. I say that even though I'm still currently reading it, and probably will be for some time to come. It's about 1,400 pages in print and the ebook formats to about 3,500 on my iPad mini.

http://www.amazon.com/Gotham-History-York-City-1898/dp/01951...

Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York is on Project Gutenberg.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13042

One interesting thing in this book is that it has a very early reference to Saint Nicholas as an explicitly Santa Claus-like figure:

> And the sage Oloffe dreamed a dream—and, lo! the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children. And he descended hard by where the heroes of Communipaw had made their late repast. And he lit his pipe by the fire, and sat himself down and smoked; and as he smoked the smoke from his pipe ascended into the air, and spread like a cloud overhead. And Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread over a great extent of country—and as he considered it more attentively he fancied that the great volume of smoke assumed a variety of marvelous forms, where in dim obscurity he saw shadowed out palaces and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then faded away, until the whole rolled off, and nothing but the green woods were left. And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe he twisted it in his hatband, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished Van Kortlandt a very significant look, then mounting his wagon, he returned over the treetops and disappeared.

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ctkrohnJul 2008

This summer I've read/am reading/am planning to read:

* The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Robert Caro)

* Options Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques (Sheldon Natenberg)

* Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Edwin Burrows & Mike Wallace)

* Egil's Saga (anonymous)

* Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino)

If you have any interest in the history of New York City at all, or if you're interested in seeing an incredibly well done character study, read "The Power Broker." Probably the best biography I've ever read... Ron Chernow's biographies of J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and Hamilton are all great, but Caro's on Robert Moses blew me away.

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