The Little Big Book Of New York
New York, it is said, has one of everything, so what better form to capture its abundance than an anthology, as shown in Fried and Tabori's latest, 16th addition to the Little Big Book series. Poetry by Whitman, lashings of Fran Lebowitz, the lyrics to Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind," a recipe for Waldorf salad and plenty of luscious trivia make for a surprisingly tasty dish garnished with gaudy vintage illustrations, many of them so enlarged that they take on a saturated neon glow befitting the book's raucous subject. Much of this material has been collected elsewhere, but the juxtapositions are clever and there are some delightful rarities, including Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Letter to New York," James Huneker's essay "The Lungs" and Willie Perdomo's "123rd Street Rap." Like all takes on New York, this one is personal. Rodriguez may be New York's most common surname, but the recipes are not for chicharrones and mofongo but for matzoh ball soup, pizza and other foods traceable to the great wave of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. The city those immigrants discovered and helped shape is much in evidence here, but the voices of more recent arrivals are barely evident. That caveat aside, anyone who revels in the city that never sleeps (and is always ready to eat) will want to own this stylish book.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.