How the other half lives
Subtitle: studies among the tenements of New York
By: Jacob A. Riis ; with an introduction and notes by Luc Sante.
Contributors: Sante, Luc.
Series: Penguin classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 228
Subjects: Poor -- New York (State) -- New York.; Tenement houses -- New York (State) -- New York.
Description: Jacob Riis's illustrated tour of New York's slums had an immediate and extraordinary impact on society, inspiring reforms that changed the face of the city. In 1890, when the book was published, the Lower East Side was a landscape of teeming streets and filthy tenements crowded with immigrants living in dreadful conditions.

How the Other Half Lives brings them to life - the Italians, Jews, Bohemians (Czechs and Slovaks), Blacks, and Chinese - in precise descriptions of their habits and traditions, jobs and wages, rents paid and meals eaten, and explores the effects of crime, poverty, alcohol, and lack of education and opportunity on adults and children alike.

Riis's reliance on specific, hard facts as the tools and weapons of social criticism pioneered the style of crusading journalism that continues today. His use of photographs (reproduced in this edition) to put faces to his stories was a landmark in photojournalism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. xxiii-xxv).
"How the other half lives" was first published by Charles Schribner's Sons, New York. The text of "How the other half lives" used in this Penguin Classics edition was reset from the Dover Publications edition.  The Dover edition, first published in 1971, is an unabridged republication of the text of the 1901 edition of the work.