Jonathan Lethem, the acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, reads from and discusses his new book Chronic City, a gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies. Like Manhattan itself, Lethem’s newest masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.
GezD / collective / tags / new york city
Tagged with “new york city”
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AOT #193: Jonathan Lethem Podcasts Chronic City
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Cambridge Forum: Cornelius Vanderbilt - The First Tycoon
T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon, discusses the life of 19th century railroad magnate, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Born humbly on Staten Island, an un-schooled fist fighter, he lived to earn the respect of New York’s social elite and amassed one of the nation’s first impossibly vast fortunes. Stiles contends that Vanderbilt did more than any other individual to shape the economic world today.
What business innovations, including the modern corporation, did Vanderbilt successfully create? How did he rout every competitor? What did President Lincoln ask of him in the Civil War? Why did he, one of the North’s leading business man, embrace the philosophy of the southern Jacksonian Democrats?
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Building out of a recession, part 1
Just weeks after the Wall Street Crash in 1929, work began on the Empire State Building. The Guardian’s architecture correspondent Jonathan Glancey assesses the economics of building out of a recession.
Tagged with economics great depression new deal new york city urban