You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Coffee Table: 9 Gift Books for the Discerning New Yorker

This article featuring Wendell Jamieson originally appeared in The New York Times here.

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By Sam Roberts

Nov. 29, 2018

Still undecided about what to get someone deserving — yourself included — who loves to savor armchair glimpses of New York? If you can handle the freight — both in pounds (11) and price ($250) — “New York by New York” (Assouline) is the perfect gift. This majestic five-borough kaleidoscopic tour enlists distinguished photographers (among them, Edward Steichen and Weegee) and celebrated writers (including Edith Wharton, E.B. White, Tom Wolfe) to capture the evolution of the city through immigration, maritime commerce, culture, skyscrapers, protest movements in text and more than 300 illustrations.

The book has a foreword by Jay McInerney, a suburban transplant who never looked back, and its author is Wendell Jamieson, the former Metro editor of The New York Times, who writes that “New York is both permanent and fleeting, and that’s perhaps the greatest contradiction of all.”