Glittering and glamorous, New York in the mid-nineteenth century
was also plagued by political corruption, sanitation problems, and
a growing gulf between rich and poor. In this book, Eric Homberger
brilliantly evokes the life of a city through vivid portraits of
New Yorkers struggling to reconstruct a sense of community amid the
selfish materialism of their urban environment. Homberger focuses
on four main characters who played important roles in various
reform efforts of the period: Ann Lohman, known as "Madame Restell,
the world-renowned medical expert," whose services as an
abortionist were partly responsible for the creation of a harshly
repressive public policy toward abortion that persisted for more
than a century; "Slippery Dick" Connolly, comptroller of New York
City, who escaped to Europe with millions of the city's dollars and
betrayed his confederates in the Tweed Ring; Dr. Stephen Smith, a
young surgeon at Bellevue Hospital, who was able to show that
dozens of cases of typhus had originated in a single tenement on
East 22nd Street; and Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect-in-chief
of Central Park, who brought into reality a concept promoted by the
aristocracy for the benefit of rich and poor alike. In the course
of telling the stories of these New Yorkers, Homberger describes a
host of other characters: cynical politicians employing the
ever-effective language of racism, real estate speculators angrily
contesting who was to reap the benefits of Central Park and who was
to pay, well-meaning preachers, cunning lawyers, destitute
immigrants, curious journalists, wealthy New Yorkers who anxiously
feared the city's mobs, moral reformers, and many more. Wonderful
reading, Homberger's book is also timely, for his account of the
struggle to define and create a community within a diverse and
contentious city evokes similar struggles taking place in cities
today.
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