City of Dreams
Overview: The 400-year epic history of immigrant New York
A defining American story of millions of immigrants, hundreds of languages, and one great city.
New York has been America’s city of immigrants for nearly four centuries. Growing from Peter Minuit’s tiny settlement of 1626 to one with more than three million immigrants today, the city has always been a magnet for transplants from all over the globe. It is only fitting that the United States, a “nation of immigrants,” is home to the only city built primarily by immigration. More immigrants have entered the United States through New York than through all other entry points combined, making New York’s immigrant saga a quintessentially American story.
City of Dreams is the long-overdue, inspiring, and defining account of New York’s both famous and forgotten immigrants: the young man from the Caribbean who relocated to New York and became a Founding Father, an Italian immigrant who toiled for years at railroad track maintenance before achieving his dream of becoming a nationally renowned poet; Russian-born Emma Goldman, who condoned the murder of American industrialists as a means of aiding downtrodden workers’ Dominican immigrant Oscar de la Renta, who dressed first ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama. Today’s immigrants are really no different from those who have come to America in centuries past – and their story has never before been told with such breath of scope, lavish research, and resounding spirit.
Pages: 768 Pages
Writer: Tyler Anbinder
Recommendations:
I got a chance to visit New York about 6 months before getting this book. The city has so much history, and most of it has helped to define the rest of the country. Getting to see places like Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and even the Empire State Building give you a sense of history. I was doing some follow up after the trip, I came across this book. I was fascinated to see that it represented 400 years of history of New York. More accurately, 400 years of immigrant history. The book itself has over 700 pages to go through. The story itself starts right off by engaging the reader and really drew me in. The stories of the people in early New York though the Revolutionary War are amazing. It was those stories and those people that really interested me. As the book continued on, it did get harder to read. It started to throw names out faster and faster. Pretty soon I found myself having to go back several pages to try and figure out who was who in the narrative. It got less focused on known events and how the immigrants fit into that story and more about the people. For me, this just started to lose my interest. I enjoyed almost every page up until about the 600th page. Then, it just started to become a chore to continue to read the book. I certainly think the first half of the book is worth reading and enjoyed so many of the fascinating stories. Towards the end it seemed like it was harder for the author to find meaningful stories, so he used whatever he could get his hands on.
Overall, I enjoyed the book up until the last 1/4th of the book. At that point it stopped being interesting, and I had to work and convince myself it was worth powering through. Having said that, the stories in the first 3/4ths of the book are amazing and were very enjoyable. My suggestion is to give the book a chance up until you start to get bored with the stories. At that point, you have gotten through the best of the book.