E.B. White is best known to us as the author of children's books, including Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. He was also a New Yorker journalist who won many awards for his writing including, in 1978, the Pulitzer Prize.
“E. B. White's love letter to New York.” —AMNY’s “Books Every New
Yorker Should Read”
“Just to dip into this miraculous essay—to experience the wonderful
lightness and momentum of its prose, its supremely casual air and
surprisingly tight knit—is to find oneself going ahead and
rereading it all. White’s homage feels as fresh now as fifty years
ago.” —John Updike
“New York was the most exciting, most civilized, most congenial
city in the world when this book was written. It’s the finest
portrait ever painted of the city at the height of its glory.”
—Russell Baker
“The wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on
the city.” —The New Yorker
“Part reverie, part lament and part exultation, the essay has
long been recommended by Manhattanophiles as the best sketch ever
drawn of the place. But since September 11, 2002, several sentences
near the end—sentences 55 years old—resound with a prescience so
eerie they bear repeating. 'The city, for the first time in its
long history, is destructible,' White writes. 'A single flight of
planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island
fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground
passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation
of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets
overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.'” —The Los
Angeles Times
“A masterpiece of travel writing. This edition contains an
introduction by White's stepson, Roger Angell, himself a longtime
New Yorker writer and the author of a number of best-selling books
about baseball. After Sept. 11, readers will find this book
touching, and prescient, in striking ways. Consider this paragraph:
'All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of
annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated
because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of
all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of
whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must
hold a steady, irresistible charm.' The charm isn't just the city.
It is also the utterly perfect prose of E. B. White.” —Lousiville
Courier-Journal
“White epitomized the lucid and penetrating essayistic voice so
treasured at the New Yorker, an impeccable style employed to
powerful effect in this exquisitely precise contemplation of the
New York City of his youth, and, by extrapolation, of humankind at
large. Written in 1948, this witty and perceptive praise song to
New York is a classic.” —Booklist, February 1, 2004
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