6 book picks worth a look

The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History

Edward Robb Ellis · 1966

A big, readable single-volume story of the city that keeps buildings, streets and skyline in view as it moves from Dutch settlement to the twentieth century.

How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York

Jacob A. Riis · 1890

Riis's firsthand reportage and photographs of immigrant tenement districts are the classic window onto how newcomers built dense, self-made neighbourhood worlds in late nineteenth century New York.

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

Russell Shorto · 2004

This is the definitive narrative of New Amsterdam's Dutch years and the trading-post world that English rule inherited, making it the natural starting point for this axis.

The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of Nearly 400 Years of New York City's History

Eric Homberger · 1994

Maps and images make the physical shift from Dutch settlement to English colonial port unusually clear, which suits a reader interested in buildings and urban geography.

The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870-1914

Moses Rischin · 1962

A readable, richly detailed study of how Eastern European Jewish immigrants built the Lower East Side's institutions, trades and street culture, a model for how a single wave rebuilds a neighbourhood.

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

The standard narrative history of old New York, rich on how the built city and its neighbourhoods grew alongside the money and power that shaped them.