1 comments about Paris and Elsewhere (New York Review Books Classics).

1. This collection of Cobb's essays is another book in the NYRB series which I did not want to finish reading. These essays are about more than Paris or Normandy or even Europe; here is a record left by an Englishman who passionately loved a place, a bi-cultural historian and writer who grew his soul between the rare archived records of France and the living streets he loved.
   
   Richard Cobb has shown me that writing a memoir of place is a sensory experience. His essays are so rich in textured intimacy that I feel "le Cobb" is living still. One can find him strolling down an avenue observing every alteration of the weather, every change in the pavement, in the passersby, their clothing and language. I imagine Cobb still sitting in his favorite haunt, the late night and early morning caf?, sipping the 4:00 a.m. calvados, or apple brandy, as he watches the barges come up the river. From his youth, to his late travels, Cobb had found that one cannot write history without knowing the living. Le Cobb called himself a "prisoner of habit" (301), and this, I believe, is the key to the depth of detail in his writing. He frequented the same places, the same towns, kept in touch with the same French and Belgian friends. But there is also something exquisitely lonely about Cobb, the solitary observer, that appeals to the wounded romantic in every traveler.
   
   I'm concerned that the general reader will not pick up this book; the density of language in Paris and Elsewhere appears to be for the intimate specialist only. But the essays are about desire for a place, about human interaction in that space, how people create each other's lives, and the anger and grief one feels when a beloved city or village is altered forever--phenomena and feelings which anyone can apply to anyplace in the world. I highly recommend this book for people involved in city planning, the New Urbanists, any reader wondering why the French no longer wear berets, or any reader looking for a context or background as to how or why the recent riots and rebellions occurred across France in the past year.
   
   Cobb loved France enough to criticize the French particularly in the decades from the Baron Haussman in the mid 19th-century to Georges Pompidou in the 1970s when so much destruction was visited upon Paris in the name of `architecture.' Cobb shows that Brussels and Paris sustained more damage after World War II than before: "The damage which has been inflicted on these two cities is not, then, the result of enemy--or Allied--action" (200). In Paris distinctive neighborhoods were destroyed by the French themselves with no concern for how people's lives were being altered or the monoculture being created. Well, Monsieur Cobb, this vandalism to intimate dwellings, social settings, tiny restaurants, private gardens, the homes and boulevards of experience, is now a global condition. Thank you so much, Professor Cobb, for such beautiful writing on such a bittersweet topic.

4 comments about Ethnic New York: A Complete Guide to the Many Faces & Cultures of New York (Passport Books).

1. It's definitely useful to have an A-Z guidebook to NY's many immigrant groups. But this book has many shortcomings and inaccuracies. For example, it barely mentions the huge Russian presence in Brighton Beach, and its section on Germans ignores their best restaurants in the Glendale section of Queens. Errors include a statement that the early Greek immigrants settled in the South Bronx between 14th and 15th Streets (there are no such streets in the Bronx!) and locating the Masjid Al Farouq mosque between 4th and 5th Streets, when it is really between 4th and 5th Avenues.



2. I found this book accurate and amazing! Mr. Leeds highlights so many neighborhoods with a keen understanding for New York and its cornucopia of ethnic flavor. Mr. Leeds, adding to what few tour guides know and understand, recognizes the recent Jewish immigrants to Brighton Beach-- in addition to pinpointing the best restaurants (Russian, Germnan, Italian Polish, Puerto Rican, etc.) with a simplicity, profundity, and flair that makes visiting them extra special!



3. I found that this guide assists you in discovering the diversity, background, and curiosity within Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx neighborhoods. I used it to uncover new restaurants and cuisines, especially authentic, unpretentious, inexpensive ones, whenever visiting the Big Apple.

   It is great when you go into neighborhoods where they just don't speak English and often new immigrants (natives) on the street or over the phone are too myopic in giving directions.

   It is great for the NYC visitor as exploring Queens and Brooklyn by subway doesn't come without some intrepidation, especially in the evening. But after qualifying the areas that I do know quite well, Little Italy and Chinatown, I read areas that I recently visited Koreantown, Manhattan and Little Columbia in Jackson Heights, Queens. I now value the insight and comprehensive amount of research the author presents.

   Each ethnic group has a clear vignette on when they came and settled, the reasons for immigrating, noteworthy aspects of their culture, political and religious organizations, and restaurants, markets, shops, museums, and cultural activities. Some 500 pgs worth!

   He gives a lot of practical info, phone numbers, hours open, specialties, so that when you are on a quest, you can find it. Lots of factoids and city trivia are sprinkled everywhere. Many opinions were on the mark. Good index.

   The first reviewer needs to read more thoroughly: a) Russian Jews in Brighton Beach, p 223-8; b) Germans in Ridgewood, Queens (next to Glendale), p 55-7; c) even a random tourist like me knows that The Bronx starts at 140-150th St, a typo.

   My main critique is that the author could have included simple "bigger-picture" maps showing the neighborhoods and Metro stops to make it more tourist friendly. While he gives general directions on where they are located, often I couldn't determine which borough it was in.




4. If you want to stay in the cocoon of midtown Manhattan don't bother with this book. But if you want to see the REAL, non-homogenized-Middle-American New York, read this. If you want to see the outer boroughs, read this to know what's interesting. Thanks to this book, I discovered:

   *Jackson Heights (mostly Columbian) *Brighton Beach (mostly Russian) *Greenpoint (Polish) *Bensonhurst (the REAL Little Italy) *Belmont (another Italian area in the Bronx; I liked Bensonhurst better, its easier to reach by subway, bigger and better kept) *3 separate Hasidic Jewish areas (Crown Heights, Boro Park and Williamsburg) *Washington Heights (Dominician/Puerto Rican) *Astoria (Greek) *Flushing (Chinese) *Atlantic Avenue (Arabic) *Midwood (Syrian Jewish)

   One caveat: if you are interested in one particular restaurant call to make sure it is open.

No comments about Trail Guide to the South Fork - With a Natural History (Long Island, New York).

No comments about Veg Out: Vegetarian Guide to New York City, 2nd Edition.

2 comments about The Big Green Apple: Your Guide to Eco-Friendly Living in New York City.

1. I picked up this book about 2 weeks ago and I am halfway through it and I love it.
   
   It explains the details of food labels and outlines little things you can do in NYC to help make the world one step closer to being sustainable.
   
   Check it out, plus its only $10



2. This book truly is the Bible for "Green" living in New York City. Has info and advice on food, electricty, transportation, waste, workplace and so much more. Also has a great directory of "green" businesses and organizations throughout the city.
   
   What's best: it's not all preachy and bossy. Real nice tone, pleasant, funny and casual. So easy to read and start making your NYC life greener!

No comments about New York City: A Photographic Portrait.

1 comments about Finger Lakes Splendor.

1. I needed a picture book with minimal text to give to a non-english speaker showing them my home. Finally, I found it. It's hefty and thus expensive to ship, but it's worth it. A really nice balance of seasons, landscapes, people and places of western ny.

No comments about Rand McNally NYC 5-Borough, New York: Manhattan/Bronx/brooklyn/queens/staten Island New York.

5 comments about False Papers.

1. Andre Aciman is an astoundingly gifted writer. When I first read his memoir "Out of Egypt" five years ago, I was amazed by its wit and wisdom, its precious and seamless blend of irony and deep feeling. Having followed his career in writing ever since, I am thrilled by the recent publication of "False Papers," a magnificent compilation of fourteen of his best essays from the past few years. These pieces can be seen as a kind of sequel to "Out of Egypt," an extension of its central theme of exile in new, often unexpected directions. In "Out of Egypt" Aciman vividly reminisced about his childhood years in Alexandria up to their dismal end, when amid the virulent anti-Semitism of Nasser's Egypt he and his family were expelled. The essays of "False Papers," by contrast, pertain more to the intellectual and emotional residues of exile-in particular the "confused, back-and-forth, up-and-around" way of thinking, remembering, desiring, and relating to oneself and to others that exile seems to foster. Aciman writes poignantly but analyzes ruthlessly: he may be one of the most introspective of current writers, and at a time when memoirs and confessions line the shelves, but refreshingly, he is also one of the least self-indulgent and complacent. Complexity does not faze him. He excels at finding a concrete metaphor, typically from far afield, to convey some paradox of memory or desire: for instance, his surprisingly apt use of the financial term "arbitrage" to illustrate how one might "firm up the present...by experiencing it from the future as a moment in the past," much like an arbitrageur might trade securities in different markets to benefit from different prices. He can qualify thoughts and impressions without diluting them into a muddle, and even, occasionally, cast doubt on the relevance of his most reliable figures and tropes-to wit, exile-without sacrificing any of his writing's underlying pathos. Few, in short, can match Aciman when it comes to a grasp of the fitful economy of the soul, and even fewer could hope to write about it so deftly and affectingly.

   Those, like myself, who have already read and enjoyed Aciman's essays on their first appearance in print will want to own a book that brings them all together. Those who have not are to be envied the opportunity to read them in "False Papers" for the first time.




2. I found Mr.Aciman's essays suffering from a infatuation with his own self-righteousness. Preachy, bigoted and too often innacurate, he bakes a quite dull mixture of bloated prose and shallow, prejuciced view about many subjects one suspects he knows little or nothing about. The books distils the grandiose retorique of cocktail-party chatter and leaves the reader with a sad sense of having wasted his own time. My advice would be to seriously check it out at a public library before devoting time and money to this thing. Life's too short for this kind of drivel.



3. Andre Aciman is our contemporary Proust--the same elegance, the same penetrating eye, the same love for memory and its cinematic clarities.



4. André Aciman's collection of essays on place and nostalgia is as absolutely gorgeously written as his superb family memoir OUT OF EGYPT, and covers the amazing array of places he's lived and left: Alexandria (first and foremost), Rome, Paris, and New York, with side visits to sites important to his sense of himself, Illiers-Combray (Proust's village) and Bethelhem. At his best, Aciman is funny, incisive and extraordinarily clever; his best essays involve sites where he can focus more on other people than just himself, and he can allow his wit and empathy to emerge. Since his topic is always nostalgia here, it is inevitable that much of his critical focus should be himself (as he points out repeatedly and intelligently, the urge towards nostalgia is always as much a yearning for one's self and one's memories as it is for a particular place). There are times, however, when his interest in his self tends more towards a carefully nurtured narcissism than an incisive self-critique and when you want to roll your eyes at the insufferably precious delight with which he can regard himself.



5. Like other Aicman books rhis really worth reading, some wonderful insights, into a long vanished world.

1 comments about Harvey Wang's New York.

1. "(Harvey Wang's New York is) a little gem that celebrates the obscure New Yorkers who represent the city's diversity..." -Entertainment Weekly.

   "Wang's photos are direct, arresting, even soulful, and his character's stories are surprisingly poignant...No matter how many millions of stories are in the Naked City, these are sure to linger in your mind." - Los Angeles Times .

   `I can conceive of Harvey Wang's New York as readily as Liebling's, Walt Whitman's or Edith Wharton's...(the book is the product ) of a man who, like Balzac, intuitively understands the primacy of work in the lives of working people." -Albany Sunday Times Union.