New York Stories: Landmark Writing from Four Decades of New York Magazine

by New York Magazine, Tom Wolfe (Foreword)

The magazine that is the city that is the world

Just in time for its fortieth anniversary, New York magazine presents a stunning collection of some of its best and most influential articles, stories that captured the spectacle, the turbulence, and the cultural realignments of the past four decades.

Covering subjects from “Radical Chic” to Gawker.com, written by some of the country’s most renowned authors, here are works that broke news, perfectly captured the moment, or set trends in motion. In New York Stories , Gloria Steinem (whose Ms. Magazine was introduced in New York ) broaches the subject of women’s liberation; Tom Wolfe coins “The Me Decade”; and Steve Fishman piercingly portrays the unwanted martyrdom of the 9/11 widows. Cutting edge features that invented terms like “brat pack” and “grup”; profiles of defining cultural figures including Joe Namath, Truman Capote, and long-shot presidential candidate Bill Clinton; and reports that inspired the acclaimed movies Saturday Night Fever, GoodFellas , and Grey Gardens –all are included in this one-of-a-kind compilation.

The writers who chronicled the times that began with Nixon’s campaign and end with Obama’s are at their best in New York Stories . It’s an irresistible anthology from a magazine that, like the city itself, is still making stars, setting standards, and going strong.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, New York, Short Stories, Writing, Anthologies

624 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2008

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains some magnificent pieces of thought provoking writing that capture the essence of a specific era in New York history. Many of the stories are timeless and flow seamlessly from the past into my current understanding of the world and specifically the city. Almost irrefutable selections, really. So why only three stars? Because it's an anthology, and by it's very nature it should contain a wide enough variety of topics that no reader's tastes walk away completely satiated. It's also pretty lengthy, and while I enjoy a long book I did experience a feeling of obligatory plodding.

[Georgia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Top 5:
1. “Comedy Isn’t Funny” by Chris Smith
2. “The Dead Wives Club, or Char in Love” by Steve Fishman
3. “Hollywood’s Brat Pack” by David Blum (technically biased, because I have already read this a few times)
4. “My Breast” by Joyce Wadler
5. “David and his Twenty-Six Roommates” by Debbie Nathan

Bottom 5
1. “The Death of (the Idea of) the Upper East Side” by Jay McInerney
2. “How Not To Be Humiliated in Snob Restaurants” by Gael Greene
3. “Unanswered Prayers” by Julie Baumgold
4. “The $2,000-An-Hour Woman” by Mark Jacobson
5. “One Brief, Scuzzy Moment” by Gary Indiana

[Barry Levy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As you might expect with a book of this length with dozens of "stories" or essays, many are good, several are not so good and a few, such as Gail Sheehy's "The Secret of Grey Gardens," are excellent. Sheehy's portrait of Big Edie and Little Edie is incisive, sensitive, empathetic and ultimately very moving.
Another outstanding piece is "Woody and Me" by Nancy Jo Sales. It is -- thank Heavens! -- not another hatchet job of you-know-who. It is, instead, a bitter sweet retelling of her correspondence with her idol, Woody Allen, when she was only thirteen and he was forty-two and at a turning point in his film career. It is an achingly honest coming-of-age tale.
There are a number of essays that, for lack of a better word, are "snarky" and ugly, such as Ron Rosenbaum's "Sid Vicious and Nauseating Nancy: A Love Story" and Julie Baumgold's "Unanswered Prayers: The Death and Life of Truman Capote" which is particularly painful reading.
On the other hand, Joyce Wadler's "My Breast: One Woman's Cancer Story" is told with bravery and heart and humor.
And Michael Daly is to be commended for his unflinching portrait of a good cop gone wrong in "Crack in the Shield."
But my personal favorite is probably George Plimpton's laugh-out-loud "If You've Been Afraid to Go to Elaine's These Past Twenty Years, Here's What You've Missed." It also has the funniest final sentence in this volume of "New York Stories."

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really a remarkable collection. It has Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic" and "The 'Me' Decade" pieces; the articles that gave rise to movies such as Grey Gardens, Saturday Night Fever, and Goodfellas; and what I think is Gloria Steinem's coining of the phrase Women's Lib (in her article "After Black Power, Women's Liberation"; she went on to launch Ms. magazine as an insert to New York magazine). I really had no idea that New York was such an important magazine.

The collection also contains two or three other articles that I had to pass along to friends...Emily Nussbaum's "Say Everything," about the new generation gap between "digital natives" and the rest of us, and Adam Sternbergh's "Up with Grups," which points out the weird LACK of a generation gap between cargo-panted, T-shirt-wearing, Alt Music-loving 50-year-olds like me and our identical (in those ways, anyway) junior counterparts.

The book is a pretty amazing time-travel ride as it bounces around throughout the magazine's 40-year history. Can't recommend it too highly.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of magazine writing anthologies - I enjoy them in a lot of ways better than essay collections - and this is one of the most amazing collections I've ever read. Every single piece in here is completely iconic. You have Tom Wolfe writing about the Black Panthers and Gloria Steinem writing about feminism, as well as the pieces that inspired Taxi, Saturday Night Fever, and Goodfellas. And the "lesser" articles are just as incredible. Seriously, if you read magazines - ever - you owe it to yourself to read this book.

[Matt Schiavenza · Rating 4 out of 5]

The anointed star of this anthology of magazine articles is Tom Wolfe. Which is a shame: His foreword is a self-referential affair full of Wolfe's flabby "new journalism" tics and affectations, and his two pieces — on dining with the Black Panthers at Leonard Bernstein's Upper East Side apartment and on the "me" generation of the '70s — aren't much better.

But don't let that deter you. This is a superb collection. Pete Hamill's essay on the angry white working class is eerily prescient and could have appeared today, while Jimmy Breslin's profile of young, swinging Joe Namath in late '60s New York feels, oddly, undated. There's Joyce Wadler's moving essay on her breast cancer diagnosis; Ariel Levy's funny and biting "Female Chauvinist Pigs," and Debbie Nathan's astonishing piece on the lives of illegal immigrant migrants living cheek by jowl in a Washington Heights tenement. There are also the articles, like Nik Cohn's "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" and Nicholas Pileggi's "Wiseguy," which found wider cultural resonance as the films "Saturday Night Fever" and "Goodfellas," respectively.

Not everything here is a winner. A Stephen Sondheim piece on crossword puzzles is tedious, and I couldn't get through a Nora Ephron essay on Manhattan's proto-foodies. But this is the rare anthology that a reader can indulge in without picking and choosing. It also shows that the issues of New York and the issues of the United States as a whole are more closely related than commonly thought. It just takes a good writer to make the connection. But maybe not Tom Wolfe.

[Michael Lovito · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive collection of some of the most culturally significant magazine journalism in American history and other, lesser known pieces that are nonetheless excellent. Does a great job of balancing the trendy/elite parts of New York with the street-level working class ones. Makes me (almost) want to try and be a magazine writer again.

[Sidik Fofana · Rating 5 out of 5]

SIX WORD REVIEW: New York City's soul in gloss.

[Amber Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love New York magazine so I'm surprised I only recently found this book (it was published in 2008). I really loved it...hoping for another volume?

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's amazing how much a part of the culture these articles have become - Saturday Night Fever, Goodfellas and Taxi, for instance, have all been inspired by stories in this book. Some of them are wonderful - George Plimpton's entry about his evening with an aspiring writer, who's wife spent every penny on purchasing the night at an auction, was touching and celebrity-filled. Nancy Jo Sales' article about Woody Allen's letters to her when she was a lonely teenager was also terrific. Some, like David Blum's entry on the Brat Pack, brought back old NYC memories. But others, like Jimmy Breslin's article on running for office, while extremely topical in their time, but now seem very dated.

This is a great book to check out of a library - I don't know if I really would want to own a number of these stories, but it was really enjoyable revisiting those worlds briefly.

[Christine Rebbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd always been more of a "New Yorker" gal myself, but I really enjoyed this look at selected pieces from "New York" magazine about living in New York City. Not EVERY article was of interest to me; some were a bit too insular, like you really had to live there to "get it". But I was surprised to find a couple of good pieces by Tom Wolfe, whose books I've long enjoyed; one of Gloria Steinem's earlier looks at feminism (Ms. Magazine originally started as a supplement in New York); and articles which after publication led to the T.V. series "Taxi" and the movies "Saturday Night Fever" and "Goodfellas". It did take me a while to read this BIG book, a few articles at a time between other books, and I was very impressed. Decided I would start to look at copies of "New York" at the library -- but then found our county library doesn't carry it. They don't carry the "New Yorker" either. Sigh... provincial Maryland...

[Amy]

I'm teaching this book this coming semester, so am in the process of reading it. Some of the essays are very frivolous & about a segment of New York life I'm not that interested in-- the richie-richs. But then there are some really interesting essays. One takes us inside the life of an illegal Mexican immigrant, who lives in the basement of a big apartment building with twenty-six others. The landlord knows they're there, and collects rent, but through an intermediary, to keep his hands cleanish. There's also a good piece about thirty-year-olds in NYC who still act like they're in their twenties. And a really fascinating piece about Grey Gardens, and the kooky relatives of Jackie O who lived there in squalor. Well, that veers into journalism about the richie-richs, doesn't it?

[Branden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I had never read the magazine, I haphazardly picked this up on my way out of the city while sightseeing with my Japanese wife. She became enamored with the city after only two days, and her delight must have put me in some sort of trance, as I'd never really enjoyed the city myself... Having finally gotten through all the pieces, my feelings toward the self-absorbed city remain the same. That being said, there are some interesting pieces within, and I don't deny these journalists the influence they conjured through these stories. Well worth a read, no matter your take on the city that never sleeps.

[lp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an unbelievably inconic collection of essays -- each is so strongly written that although the book is almost 700 pages long, I would have a hard time finding one weak sentence. I think it made me a better writer just reading it... just being near it. I'm considering sleeping with it underneath my pillow. Admirable writing that makes me appreciate NYC, and the people who helped write it, even more.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly a fantastic collection of some of the best writing in New York Magazine to date. But that quality really comes from editorial choices which make New York, a city I've visited but never lived in, seem like a place I know rather intimately, keeping me fully interested in a story about corrupt cops in the 80's, wall street scum, artistic ups and downs as well as Presidential coverage of a country not my own.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good selection or reprinted articles. Wolfe's foreword is part memorial to Clay Felker and part self-promotion for "Radical Chic" with a new line of apology, that of poking fun at "political correctness."

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Landmark writing from four decades of New York magazine." Tom Wolfe forward to a bounty of short-stories and fictional essays from some well known writers. Great read. Wonderful look at recent history, politics, and social issues from people of the day. (1960's to present).

[Micaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A seriously fantastic collection of important journalism published in one of my favorite magazines of all time.

[Emma]

Can't help myself. I'm homesick.

[Andrew Louis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduced me to so many great writers.

[John]

Thanks, daughter Mary, for this great gift. Reading with relish.
Landmark writing indeed.

[Francine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting collection of articles covering politics, cultural trends, high society, etc. Just looking at the author listing is enough to intrigue and it pays off.

[Martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seems somewhat dated. Seems like not the best work by some of these authors.

[Chandana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of articles by writers that are as energetic and inspiring as NYC itself.