This coffee table book is a window into the world’s most exciting city
Part of Assouline's Legends Collection, New York by New York offers a kaleidoscopic tour through the Big Apple...
Words: Anna Galbraith
In association with:
The late, great John Updike once wrote “the true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
And it is true that few (if any) other cities can claim to contain the wealth of cultural significance, societal contradictions and magnetic charisma that the — actually comparatively small— Big Apple holds within its watery parameters.
So, just what is it about this glittering mass of bricks and mortar that continues to provide ceaseless inspiration to wide-eyed visitors, artists and long-term residents alike?
Photo courtesy of Assouline
Well, according to Wendell Jamieson in the introduction to New York by New York, it is the intangible spirit of the city, and it’s ever-evolving citizens.
He writes, “the epochs of New York City layer themselves on top of each other like the experiences of those who walk its streets. The spirit of each can be sensed, sometimes just below the surface, sometimes right on top.”
Photo courtesy of Assouline
This line can be found in the introduction to Assouline’s newly released book, which Martine Assouline herself has described as “a little tribute to the New York I love” — although if this truly was the desired effect of publication, we are unable say that she has succeeded.
This sublime coffee table book full of anecdotes, wit, tribute, and – of course — breathtaking photography, is undoubtedly a tribute to the world’s favourite city — but there is nothing “little” about it.
Photo courtesy of Assouline
Buy this book and travel through the most important periods of this great city and into all its boroughs, from Manhattan and Brooklyn to the Bronx and Queens to Staten Island with glimpses into its history and the development of its iconic skyline.
Photo courtesy of Assouline
Discover stories from immigration in the early twentieth century to Prohibition in the 1920s to the youth revolution in the sixties.
Remember the best moments in Broadway and the discos at Studio 54; dream with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, and Audrey Hepburn or Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Photo courtesy of Assouline
This volume reveals New York through the expert eyes and iconic images of leading photographers from Edward Steichen to Peter Lindbergh, together with texts and quotes from top writers including E.B. White, Edith Wharton, Tom Wolfe and Jay Mcinerney.
With a slipcase and typography created especially for the occasion, New York by New York is the perfect book be treasured by lovers of this great City — residents or otherwise — for decades to come.
New York by New York is available to buy at assouline.com
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