Hello. As you can see by the title of this page, my name is Michelle. I’m studying Biomedical Engineering. I’m also the Epee captain of the Women’s fencing team in CCNY. I identify as multiracial, but if you really want to know, then my family’s from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia, South America, and the Caribbean.

BOOK REVIEW

Book Review on Essays in the History of New York City As a New Yorker, one tends to feel great pride in the city that they live in; it’s one of the major world cities of the world, the real estate is highly sought after, and there’s a plethora of activities and places to eat; however, many New Yorkers, despite being filled to the brim with pride, don’t know much about the history of New York. Essays in the History of New York, a collection of six essays gathered and edited by Irwin Yellowitz, is a short, quick read about various times the history of New York. From the movement from a Dutch leadership to an English one to the career of Richard Croker, there is a bit of variety in the book. The six essays are titled, “New York Mayors: The Initial Generation,” Political Democracy and the Distribution of Power in Antebellum New York City,” Who Went to School in Mid-Nineteenth Century New York? An Essay in the New Urban History,” “Green-Wood Cemetery and the American Park Movement,” Eight Hours and the Bricklayers’ Strike of 1868 in New York City,” and lastly, “Richard Croker: An Interim Report on the Early Career of a ‘Boss’ of Tammany Hall.” These essays leave very little to the imagination; the authors simply expanded upon their respective essay’s title but overall. What you see in the title is what you get, there’s no mystery to what the essay is about. Although each essay focused on different subjects, the common trend was the focus on explaining various periods of New York City’s history when it was undergoing some form of a change, whether it is sociopolitical or environmental. Since there were multiple authors, it’s hard to say what they were all trying to say as “one,” especially since these essays were most probably written during different times. Looking at each essay individually, one could generally say that each author was writing about how changes in history led to the New York becoming what we know and love today. While each of the essays achieves this goal, all of the authors managed to do this with one surprisingly similar characteristic for their writing styles: a tendency to write circumlocutorily. Rather than giving the information in a straightforward and succinct manner, the authors insisted upon giving lengthy explanations for everything, which took away from the essays. That being said, some essays were guiltier of this quality than others. This benefited the authors since it enables them to make their piece lengthier and have a more academic feel to it. Sadly, this form of writing comes with the price of possibly boring the reader or even confusing them. Though each essay is about a different subject, five of the six deal with the classism that existed in New York City’s past. (The sixth and last essay is a biography of some sort of Richard Croker’s political career, thus it’s hard to connect this essay to the others. Though it could be argued that one could connect the essay to the others because of the fact that it discusses Croker’s rise to power from his less than humble beginnings, the essay itself remains arbitrary—a problem that could have possibly been avoided by the addition of an essay that would give a smoother transition between the fifth and sixth essays.) This classist element can be seen within the first five essays because they discuss certain classes having a benefit over the others because of some quality the group possesses, more often than not the quality being their wealth. This can first be seen Edward Pessen’s essay “Political Democracy and the Distribution of Power in Antebellum New York City” when he writes, “In 1828 the wealthiest 1 percent of the city’s adults owned about 40 percent of the city’s wealth… [Those] who composed the mass of the city’s population owned a miniscule proportion of its wealth” (35). The quote is very straightforward and there aren’t any other conclusions that can be drawn from it; there was a great wealth gap that existed in New York City that ironically is very similar to what New York City has today. The wealthiest individuals in society also tended to have more access to opportunities, which segues into Selma Berrol’s essay “Who Went to School in the Mid-Nineteenth Century?” Berrol writes that less than twenty percent of eligible boys were enlisted in primary school. This is because there were no mandatory education laws, which lead to many boys being forced to go into child labor. (40). If you were a child from a wealthy family, you could afford to be sent to school because you wouldn’t need to worry about working support your family. This isn’t saying that many children from poor families didn’t attend school. In fact, “New York parents had some special reasons to hold formal education in some high regard… so many of the sons of laborers and the foreign-born were in enrolled” (57). Though the children from lower social classes did attend schools, it was easier for children from upper classes to attend because of the reason stated earlier. Lastly, the upper classes even had an advantage over the lower classes when it came to accessing the countryside and recreation. This is seen when Donald Simon writes, “It was the poorest workingmen to whom recreational places were increasingly unavailable because they lacked the means of transportation to outlying open space” (63). The rich were able to afford transportation to get outside of the city and during that time, the early to mid nineteenth century, the wealthy also tended to live outside of the cities, which were becoming more crowded as people moved in looking for job opportunities. Nevertheless, even though these essays deal with the classist elements of the previous New York City society, they also discussed how many of the problems were resolved, which began the transition to New York City we know today.