Great book for anyone interested in the history of New York City or in "The City" in general. This book offers quite an extensive history lesson from the 17th century until today and plenty of great images of the city. I have a greater appreciation for all that New York is and has been and for its role in shaping the USA. Its fun to look at pictures of how things were many years ago and to compare those pictures to how New York looks today.

Every history book has a slant. This one has several, but the most dramatic one is the portrayal of the vast gulf between rich and poor that has long been part of New York City's uniqueness. Each side gets a lot of attention. A secondary slant is the theme of the city's change from a rural area into a metropolis with manufacturing to the modern city mostly of financial markets, stores, entertainment, and residents.

To keep it interesting, the book also goes out of its way to provide little known factoids. For example, Manhattan was probably purchased for cash rather than trinkets and the value of the cash was closer to $600 than the famed $24 we all have heard so much about (someone used the wrong currency exchange rate in the past). There's a nice story about the origins of Typhoid Mary, who inadvertently poisoned those she cooked for. You will also learn that disease was once so rampant that 1 in 25 adults died each year. Without immigrants, the city would not have grown.

Those who are descended from those who immigrated through Ellis Island into one of the ethnic neighborhoods will find many photos to remind them of their heritage. There are also excellent photographic perspectives on the development of the African American community beginning from the Dutch slaveholding days.

The development of the major bridges is one of the visual pleasures of the book. The building of Central Park is a close second. The water piping pictures are quite remarkable, as well.

The book will delight those who do not know much about New York City, but would like to know more. Coming from California, New York City did not get much attention in the history books after the Revolutionary War except when financial markets crumbled. So much of this was new to me.

The book will probably be even more of a delight to those who are from New York City. This is almost like a family album.

I got a lot of pleasure from seeing how areas in the city that I know well have changed over the years. In many cases, you get to see an intersection as a farm, then as a tenement, then as a skyscraper, and sometimes even as a second (more famous) skyscraper.

There is also a lot that is missing. You will find little about higher education (except the building of Columbia in Morningside Heights), museums, libraries, and the magnificent interior art in New York. Performing arts are almost excluded except for Vaudeville and Broadway. The development of air transportation and television are also little developed. But one volume cannot do everything.

When you are done, ask yourself, "What are the irresistible forces about a great city that must be taken advantage of?" That can be a useful guide to ordinary citizens as well as those who provide services in such metropolises.

Have a great visit to New York City!

Ric Burns has made it compelling for future generations to look deeply at some of the most important events in American history and see them fully with the sense of being of that time and yet with the perspective one gains with hindsight. His boundless curiosity is only matched by his gift for packaging the product. To tackle the subject of New York City and render a complete picture is a testament to his drive. Even a jaded native-New Yorker will look at the city in a new way after reading this book!

This book did not hold my interest, primarily because it is too breezy. It is a companion to the PBS documentary. Unfortunately, it is not as successful as the video, perhaps because it is more difficult to write a documentary than to do a video of one. Ward provides a useful description of the difference between historians and documentarians: "Historians delight in telling us what our history is and what it means. The documentarian, on the other hand, as often delights in recording and conveying the simple fact that we have had a history at all: that there was once a time when people looked like this, or sounded like that, or felt these ways about such things. The historical documentary is often more immediate and more emotional than history proper because of its continual joy in making the past present through visual and verbal documents."

The most compelling parts of this book are not by documentarians, but by historians. These are essays by prominent Civil War scholars, including Shelby Foote and James M. McPherson, authors of the most highly regarded books about the Civil War--"The Civil War: A Narrative" by the former and "Battle Cry for Freedom" by the latter.

The illustrations in this book are not as good as those in "The American Heritage New History of the Civil War," but does have more and better maps.

Persons interested in an overview of the Civil War would be better off turning to the PBS video or to a book.

Gepffrey Ward's narrative is a complete departure from the textbook Civil War stories that we tend to read today. His is a fascinating account that deals with the ordinary people and the history that they lived through. I found this book an especially rewarding buy because of it's very interesting and absorbing language and illustrations. Overall, this book has made a particularly deep impact and led me to look at the civil war as a time, when hell was truly incarnate on earth.

In view of Ward's excellence in writing I would give him five stars, and also because he tells the full stories of Gettysburg, Bull Run (both of them), Antietam, Shiloh, and Appamattox Court House. He brings the Civil War to life like nobody else can. I am especially touched by his quotation from the letter of Col. Sullivan Ballou of Rhode Island, it was a tear-jerking moment for me when I saw the series and when I read this book over and over again. This book is an amazing readable account of a gone-by era and I appreciate the effort that Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward to bringing this bloody, romantic, and adventurous era to life just as they have in The West with Dayton Duncan, Baseball, and Lewis & Clark.

Read this book for the story and the pictures!

When I was a boy, my father had a two vol. set put out by American Heritage called "The Civil War." Its words, pictures, sidebars, and maps helped instill in me a fascination with the war and history.

Burns and Ward have done the same service for a new generation. This is a fine one volume treatment of the Civil War done in a most accessible fashion. The words provide a good overview and summary of the subject. What brings it alive are the many pictures, maps, focus subjects and commentaries in this coffee table book. The media and elements come together to fascinate and captivate the reader. This book is a companion to Burn's monumental ten part PBS television series by the same title. The book captures it's style well, and even uses some of the most memorable documents -- like the romantic and haunting Sullivan Ballou (sp?) letter written prior to the first Bull Run that foretold the passing of its author and a simpler America.

Althought the material is strictly introductory, even the serious Civil War student will find fascination at haveing a story they know so well, so well illustrated and illuminated.

Introduce your children to this book and watch them become interested in our country's greatest story.