Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas
Rebecca Solnit
I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. Rebecca Solnit is one of my favorite writers, but she’s mainly just an editor here–she has one or two essays, but most are by other people. I know the point of this book is to be an “atlas,” but mostly I didn’t feel like the maps added a lot–I probably would have preferred it as just a book of essays. But at any rate, there are some pretty good ones here. I tended to like best the essays that focused more on personal experiences or individual people, rather than broad trends or ideas. My favorite pieces here included “My Yiddishe Papa” by Sheerly Avni, “Of Islands And Other Mothers” by Gaiutra Bahadur, “The Mega Mezclapolis” by Alexandra T. Vasquez, “New York City: Seeing Through The Ruins” by Marshall Berman, and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s interview of RZA.