Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City
"The tales of luck or hard work that resulted in the securing of perfect tiny shoebox apartments, rehabbed brownstones, and converted industrial spaces provide a frisson of envy that keeps us reading; it’s the same urge that has us gaze up at lighted windows from the sidewalk below and wonder if someone else’s house, and thus, their very existence, is better than our own. Rosenblum’s profiles are a celebration of New York, and of what E.B. White called 'the gift of privacy, the jewel of loneliness'—the difficulties and pleasures of finding a place and making it a home."-Publishers Weekly,"For a collection of newspaper columns, Habitats is a surprisingly cohesive book with little literary flourishes here and there. Rosenblum’s nimble portraits are written from the perspective of a sharp outsider, and personal details bleed between the individuals she interviews and the spaces they inhabit until you realize that there isn’t any border between them."-New Republic,"a book rich with poignant, colorful, and endearing portraits of the common New Yorker"-Lauren Palmer,Urban Omnibus"...a must-read for all of us New Yorkers who are forever obsessed with the never-boring topic of New York real estate and who are forever curious about how our New York neighbors, from across the street to across the river, live their domestic lives behind their curtains, blinds, and wrought iron gates."-Yukie Ohta,New York Bound Books"Rosenblum writes evocatively about a city where 'neighborhoods, streets, even individual buildings are saturated with memory.' Reading these pieces is like walking down a street at dusk and glancing into people's illuminated living rooms...From these fragments of lives she weaves an intimate portrait of a city and its inhabitants."-The Guardian,