New York proclaimed

We cite from the cover : /
"If Paris suggests Intelligence, if London suggests Experience, then the word for New York is Activity."
Thus V. S. Pritchett, one of the most distinguished contemporary essayists, characterizes New York in his perceptive and brilliant distillation of the city— its people and places—from the Battery to Harlem, from the comfortable colony of New Amsterdam to the restless, throbbing modern city of towers, bridges, tunnels, ceaseless traffic, shrieking sirens, and nearly eight million inhabitants in constant motion.
Mr. Pritchett views the changing New York scene in terms of the immigrants who left their mark on the city: the Dutch, the English, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Negroes, and the Puerto Ricans. He traces the history of the city that witnessed the inauguration of Washington in 1790, the social battles of the Vanderbilts and Astors a hundred years later, and the current racial tensions in Harlem.
He captures the character of the New Yorker, native and adopted—quick, shrewd, exuberant, and prone to exaggeration. He visits his haunts—the hotels, bars, churches, restaurants, subways, shops, and theaters—and notes the striking contrasts of poverty and wealth.
Evelyn Hofer, whose camera artistry is dazzling, illuminates Mr. Pritchett's text in a collection of beautiful photographs that add a rich dimension to the personality of "the metropolis of the United States. . . the most European city in the country."