num_pages: 380
description: Nik Cohn ushers readers along the street he calls "The Heart of the World." producing a book that is a resplendent pageant of New York's high-and low-life. Among the characters we meet are a golden-tongued cab driver who calls himself a "collector of farces"; a pickpocket with the terrifying gift of impersonating his marks; a heartbreakingly beautiful Dominican tranvestite named Lush Life; strippers; pseudo-prophets; and a disgraced political veteran of the days when the graft was still honest. Conducted by a writer with the manic energy of a sideshow barker and the full-blooded lyricism of a raucous poet, this is a bebop odyssey along the Great White Way that reaches in implication far beyond the streets of New York to document the ever-evolving mixtures that make up America itself.
language: English
title: The Heart of the World
titlecomplete: The Heart of the World
genres: History, New York, Travel, The United States Of America, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 52
awards: awardedAt: 725875200000
name: Thomas Cook Travel Book Award
publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group