An ingenious social history of Gotham rendered in deft profiles … [Roberts] is an ace at compact biography ... And he is an industrious researcher, mining fascinating nuggets—some profound, some just fun—from sources familiar and obscure … You're likely to finish the book with a new appreciation of the ingenuity, courage, guile and sacrifice that transformed the wooded wilderness Henry Hudson first explored into today's throbbing, perilous 21st-century metropolis.