New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time

Canadian author Craig Taylor is intrigued by New York City: brash, nonstop, pulsating with energy, containing millions of stories. In New Yorkers, his follow-up to Londoners, Taylor collects and presents interviews with 75 of the everyday heroes who make up New York. The result is a joyous, unfiltered cacophony of the city's myriad voices.

"New York is less of a melting pot and more of a mosaic," a formerly incarcerated artist tells Taylor. "It's really like different colored tiles, and different people being who they are." Taylor tries to capture as many of those tiles as he can: he talks to elevator repairmen, bodega managers, nannies, homeless people and those who run soup kitchens. He travels the length and breadth of the city, visiting with ICU nurses, protestors, aspiring actors and singers, and a security guard at the Statue of Liberty. He hears about the mundanities of daily life, the irritations of crowded subways and too many tourists, and learns how different New Yorkers have carved out lives for themselves in their city. Taylor also renders, with care and humor, accounts of New Yorkers surviving historic challenges: September 11, Hurricane Sandy, the coronavirus pandemic. The grit and resilience of his subjects, whether bankers or electricians or subway conductors, is on full display. But so is their love for their city: most of them can't imagine living anywhere else. Taylor's collection is a tribute to the triumph and perseverance of a place--and a people--unlike any other. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

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