Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan

ISBN: 0385497148

Author: Lopate, Phillip

Condition: New

East Side, West Side, from the Little Red Lighthouse to Battery Park City, the wonders of Manhattans waterfront are both celebrated and secret-hidden in plain sight. In his brilliant exploration of this defining yet neglected shoreline, personal essayist Philip Lopate also recovers a part of the citys soul.A native New Yorker, Lopate has embraced Manhattan by walking every inch of its perimeter, telling stories on the way of pirates (Captain Kidd) and power brokers (Robert Moses), the lowly shipworm and Typhoid Mary, public housing in Harlem and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. He evokes the magic of the once bustling old port from Melvilles and Whitmans day to the era of the longshoremen in On the Waterfront, while appraising todays developers and environmental activists, and probing new plans for parks and pleasure domes with river views. Whether escorting us into unfamiliar, hazardous crannies or along a Beaux Arts esplanade, Waterfront is a grand literary ramble and defense of urban life by one of our most perceptive observers.