Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas

City Atlases

by Rebecca Solnit, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

Winner of the 2017 Brendan Gill Prize from the Municipal Arts Society of New York

"The maps themselves are things of beauty . . . A document of its time, of our time."
—Sadie Stein, New York Times
 
"One is invited to fathom the many New Yorks hidden from history’s eye."
—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

Nonstop Metropolis, the culminating volume in a trilogy of atlases, conveys innumerable unbound experiences of New York City through twenty-six imaginative maps and informative essays. Bringing together the insights of dozens of experts—from linguists to music historians, ethnographers, urbanists, and environmental journalists—amplified by cartographers, artists, and photographers, it explores all five boroughs of New York City and parts of nearby New Jersey. We are invited to travel through Manhattan’s playgrounds, from polyglot Queens to many-faceted Brooklyn, and from the resilient Bronx to the mystical kung fu hip-hop mecca of Staten Island. The contributors to this exquisitely designed and gorgeously illustrated volume celebrate New York City’s unique vitality, its incubation of the avant-garde, and its literary history, but they also critique its racial and economic inequality, environmental impact, and erasure of its past. Nonstop Metropolis allows us to excavate New York’s buried layers, to scrutinize its political heft, and to discover the unexpected in one of the most iconic cities in the world. It is both a challenge and homage to how New Yorkers think of their city, and how the world sees this capital of capitalism, culture, immigration, and more.

Contributors: Sheerly Avni, Gaiutra Bahadur, Marshall Berman, Joe Boyd, Will Butler, Garnette Cadogan, Thomas J. Campanella, Daniel Aldana Cohen, Teju Cole, Joel Dinerstein, Paul La Farge, Francisco Goldman, Margo Jefferson, Lucy R. Lippard, Barry Lopez, Valeria Luiselli, Suketu Mehta, Emily Raboteau, Molly Roy, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Luc Sante, Heather Smith, Jonathan Tarleton, Astra Taylor, Alexandra T. Vazquez, Christina Zanfagna
Interviews with: Valerie Capers, Peter Coyote, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Melle Mel, RZA

Genres: Nonfiction, New York, History, Travel, Essays, Geography, Cities

232 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2016

About the author

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering  and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her forthcoming memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, is scheduled to release in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.

Reviews

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

When this book was gifted to me, I assumed from the title that it was going to be a kind of systematic examination of New York City—its history, art, music, demographics, infrastructure—using maps. Well, it is an examination of New York, but it is more impressionistic than systematic. Indeed, it would be far more accurate to call this a collection of essays than an atlas.

Each of the 26 chapters is written by a different author, and approaches the city from a different angle. Many of them, appropriately, explore the identity of a certain subcommunity: Jews, African Americans, immigrants from the Caribbean or Latin America. Others use a specific place as a focus, such as Staten Island, Harlem, or Flushing. Still others focus on a specific aspect of the city: trash removal, riots, water supply, finance. The quality of these contributions varies, of course; and none of them delve very deeply into the subject (mostly for lack of space).

Fortunately, while no particular chapter is exemplary, this essay collection succeeds in being more than the sum of its parts. The editors did their job thoughtfully, as the essays do build into a compelling composite picture of the city. In fact, the different stories and voices succeeded in evoking the chaos and diversity of the city better than any individual author perhaps ever could. The maps (one of which accompanied each chapter) varied in quality just as much as the essays, but again their combined impact evoked the multiplicity of this great city.

So while I cannot say I had any amazing epiphanies about New York, I did feel a renewed affection for this wonderful and exasperating place. That’s a feeling most atlases don’t evoke.

[Nick Klagge · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. Rebecca Solnit is one of my favorite writers, but she's mainly just an editor here--she has one or two essays, but most are by other people. I know the point of this book is to be an "atlas," but mostly I didn't feel like the maps added a lot--I probably would have preferred it as just a book of essays. But at any rate, there are some pretty good ones here. I tended to like best the essays that focused more on personal experiences or individual people, rather than broad trends or ideas. My favorite pieces here included "My Yiddishe Papa" by Sheerly Avni, "Of Islands And Other Mothers" by Gaiutra Bahadur, "The Mega Mezclapolis" by Alexandra T. Vasquez, "New York City: Seeing Through The Ruins" by Marshall Berman, and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro's interview of RZA.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is impossible to capture a city on paper, but Nonstop Metropolis comes close. In this collection of twenty-six brilliant, layered, informative and imaginative maps, accompanied by essays written by a diverse group of writers and residents of the city, Nonstop Metropolis manages to translate a little bit of the essence of a city into art, words, marks on a page.

The maps that make up this book explore this meandering, contradictory definition of a city. Cities, in so many ways, are infinite. They exist in so many dimensions. Cities are not merely their physical geography and their history, but the sum total of the thoughts and emotions of those who live in them. Cities extend outward, upward, inward, across. There are so many ways to experience them, measure them, understand them. This book gives you a sense of that untamable scale.

It’s impossible for one book (or a thousand books) to capture a place as complicated as New York City. These maps are like a cross-section. Twenty-six ways of looking at a city. Of course, there are infinite other ways. But the maps in this collection explore so many different parts of what makes New York New York. It’s a just a taste, but it’s a powerful and fascinating taste.

I am not a city person, though I appreciate them from time to time, and I’ve spent very little time in New York. But I loved this book anyway. I loved its specifics. It was a wonderful way to think about such a big and complicated place in bite-sized chunks. I loved looking at the maps of brownstones and basketball courts in Brooklyn, of the various places riots have erupted in the city, from the 1700s through the 2000s, of landmarks important to whaling and publishing in the Manhattan of Herman Melville, of the famous theaters, jazz clubs, churches, and mosques in Harlem. Each map was its own fascinating story, and the essays, which were both personal and historical, brought the maps to life.

I was astounded by the depth and creativity of each one of these maps. So many of the maps explored two disparate ideas–sometimes things in direct conflict with each other. This is mapmaking at its most complicated, maps as a way of understanding discord, contradiction, and inequality, as well as community and connection. The most powerful maps were the most discordant, the ones that gave me a vital sense of a city in constant flux, a city constantly fighting with and reinventing itself.

In ‘Love and Rage, New York City became a maze of colored dots, representing community gardens, 311 animal abuse complains, felony assaults recorded by the NYPD, public library branches, and popular places to propose. In ‘Public/Private’, New York’s inherent inequality is made clear in a map which shows public and private schools, nanny agencies, youth and family shelters, preschool admissions consultants, and other symbols of the very wealthy and the very poor.

Another thing these maps do so well is illustrate the true stretch and extent of the city. ‘Archipelago’ reimagines New York as the Caribbean’s northernmost island, illustrating how deeply the city has been influenced by Caribbean immigrants. ‘Trash in the City’ illustrates the lengths New York City’s garbage travels–some of it is transported as far away as Ohio, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Nonstop Metropolis is a book about New York, but it’s also a book about cities, and more broadly, it’s a book about place: how we interact with the places that we live, how those places shape us and how we shape them. Like all the best writing about place, it is both a love letter and a criticism, a celebration and a fugue. It’s a big, raucous, colorful ode to a beloved city, but it does not shy away from all the darkness and horror that is also a part of New York’s identity.

[Leslie (updates on SG) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The maps are interesting, but the writing is not - at least based on the Introduction.

[Ernesto · Rating 5 out of 5]

No sé si voy a leer algo mejor este año pero bueno, ya tengo una nominación a la mejor lectura del 2019. Rebecca Solnit como ensayista es perfecta y como editora es brillante. Estos ensayos de la Nueva York disidente buscan dar una mirada fresca a la "capital de capital", a la metrópolis racista, políglota (+400 lenguas), intensa, pero bella. Los mapas que acompañan cada ensayo ilustran con precisión los argumentos de cada autor o autora que no son nadies solo que no han sido traducidos, desgraciadamente, a español.

En definitiva recomiendo la entrevista a RZA, lider de Wu Tang Clan, y Crash! de Astra Taylor. Quienes han hablado conmigo estas semanas saben que no puedo no comentarles sobre este maravilloso atlas. Hasta Valeria Luiselli tiene una intervención ;). R E C O M E N D A D O.

Faltará buscar los otros dos atlases :)

[Marge Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant book. A series of essays exploring the cultural and economic history and current infrastructure in New York City. From music to the slaveholder economic roots of Wall Street, from famous women to forgotten rebellions, Solnit and the contributors use maps of the five boroughs to tell new stories in a fresh way about the city that never sleeps.

The writing is spectacular, and the atlas and mapping illustrations are profound.

A cultural treasure.

[January Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

As if I already wasn't in love with New York, this book comes along? Beautiful and informative and...just beautiful.

[Chris A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

[kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is hard to rate! I wanted to like it more, conceptually, but the truth is I found it slow going to read. Some of the essays are very interesting, others are rather dull. There's an overall lack of cohesion, which seems like it *should* work in terms of viewing the city through many lenses, but somehow just feels disorienting. Weird form factor -- a bit too large to read comfortably, yet it feels cramped as an atlas (especially the fact that it doesn't lay flat, though the maps are split over two pages). The maps all felt quite dense and hard to engage with. It's obvious that lots of love went into all the graphic design and cartography, but something about it just missed the mark for me.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous prism of perspectives on my home.

[Deanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. Unique. Beautifully printed.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful book and illustrations. Very creative spin on one of my favorite cities, but not sure it should have been a book. Maybe another format would have suited this better.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third in a series by Solnit on power and cities, the other two being on New Orleans and San Francisco. Solnit points out that the three cities are the most unique in the United States and represent poles of power and meeting places. While I do not entirely buy that, she compares them to being islands of urbanity amongst surrounding by hostile rural red as symbols of degeneracy and sin. Solnit and Jelly-Shapiro therefore argue that New York is a symbol both of domination, capital of everything from finance to Jewish America to Black America to music, arts, publishing, ports, trade, fashion, mainstream media, and more. It represents the powerful and the ability of the powerless to organize. Through 26 different maps, New York City is shown as an ever shifting place of power of millions, where resources, space, and peoples move through history. Even the city itself has a financial center in Manhattan and an edge in Staten Island, a former garbage dump. Urban Renewal was funneled through Robert Moses’s destruction of old New York, while the burning of the Bronx by withdrawal of fire services led from its ashes to the rise of hip hop styles and punk rock rebellion.
1) Song and New York
2) Capital and finance
3) Crashes of the 21st century: 9/11, Financial Crisis, Occupy, Sandy
4) Riots history
5) Environmental impact of the city
6) Water and electricity for New York
7) Whaling and Publishing
8) Jewish New York
9) Caribbean New York
10) Subway Map renamed for women
11) Love and rage, the living organic material of New York: animal control, complaints of noise, etc.
12) Walking in 24 hours
13) Wildlife and symbolism
14) Spanish Radio
15) Burning the Bronx and dance & graffiti
16) Makers and Breakers: Olmstead, Moses, and Jane Jacobs
17) Trash in Staten Island
18) Staten Island and Wu-Tang Clan
19) Brownstones and Basketball
20) Brooklyn Villages: Natives, Freetowns, Jewish, ethnic enclaves
21) Public/Private: Elite schools and public childhoods, two different worlds.
22) Suburban New Jersey and the city
23) Planning liberty: history of religious refuge in the city
24) Languages and materials in Queens Libraries
25) Black Star Lines: Secular & religious sacred sites in Black cultural New York.
26) Movement in the city, subways, stations, population shifts day & night.

Key Themes and Concepts
-Maps show power in New York. Song, capital, water, race and ethnicity, riots, trash, language, religion, design, and movement all are contained within powerful maps.

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read several of Solnit's books I was curious to finally get my hands on one of the atlases, in this case New York, as out of the three cities in the series this is the only one I've actually been to - and only once. The maps were the best part of the book, creative and informative and detailed. Most of the essays matched that level in terms of being informative, although not all of them felt that well-written. For someone who knows next to nothing about current NYC or its history, the stream of facts, names, and dates that lined most of the essays was helpful and interesting. In terms of reading enjoyment though, I preferred maps and essays more like the one about public and private space in relation to daycare and playgrounds, which was more of a personal essay that a condensed regurgitation of facts. A few even felt short and choppy in terms of their writing style. 3 stars is probably a more accurate rating for this atlas, but I give it a 4 because of the cartography and the fact that practically everything I read was new information for me, even though some of the essays I skimmed through due to lack of interest. I'll also keep my eyes out for the other two atlases in the trilogy. Hopefully I'll read them after actually traveling to San Francisco and New Orleans at least once.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A visually interesting book that, once opened, is page after page disappointment & regret.

From the ego-centric view of what is important, west coast version of what is interesting and a text that is shameless in pandering to only the newest transplants to the 5 boroughs, this book was shocking how poorly it all came together.

The maps were appealing without ever bothering to have enough or interesting information.

The expansive rambling, disconnected stories and details of the text were lifeless and unemotional. Even the form factor seems to needlessly ration and mute the few details on each page that you might enjoy.

I can't remember the last time I returned a book but, I won't forget how good it felt to return this one.

Would have been a better app that could be uninstalled when it's thin layer of actual information had been extracted.

I'll admit it - I bought it during the holidays, I was weak and hopeful.

From now on, I will always search the Author (in case the title of "project manager" is more accurate) to see if they have more than a connection to a place than: "that's where my friends from the Bay Area moved to" (Brooklyn)

Two stars (**) for construction and printing process.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“New York is a center that pulls people in and a centrifuge that spins them out into the world.” Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas is the final volume in Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Infinite Cities’ trilogy, and the definition of “going out in style”. Solnit and NYC resident Joshua Jelly-Schapiro are co-editors, and with their editor-at-large Garnette Cadogan oversee another huge team, from cartographer Molly Roy to chief researcher Jonathan Tarleton, and forty other contributors: writers, artists, guests. New York’s triumphs and tribulations are writ large, essays on ‘our city of songs’, capital, whaling and publishing, Jewish communities, and New York’s Latin culture all contrast with essays on waste disposal, fires, riots, climate change, and crashes (from 9/11 to the Wall Street crash to Hurricane Sandy), each accompanied by stunningly rendered, completely individual maps. Alongside an enlightening interview with RZA and some beautiful work on “the world’s language capital”, my personal highlights once again come from Solnit’s essays, one on wildlife and another the brilliant feminist musing, ‘The Power of Names’, which accompanies the ‘City of Women’ map. I have always felt such an affinity to NYC and the drive to pack it all up and move there has never been so strong.

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

The maps are uniformly gorgeous, and so clever in their connections. Whaling and publishing! Stars of Harlem and stars over Harlem! New York City as northernmost Caribbean isle! I feel like I learned about more than just Popular Manhattan Bits, although I learned about those too. And the well-founded fears of gentrification and climate change and the Richifying of Manhattan are echoed against the well-founded fears of eras past. The city’s survived a lot of shit, this book says; it may just survive a lot more.

As far as the essays go, quality varies and it starts feeling a little repetitive towards the end. My absolute favorite, both as part of this collection and as part of New York writing as a whole, is “Round and Round” by Garnette Cadogan, paired with the City of Walkers map. It gets perhaps the closest of anything to explaining what exactly New York City is and means.

Least favorite was the one about New Jersey; I appreciate the desire to look at how what might be considered an outer outer borough in some respects has played into the whole grand NYC mythos, but an essay about the overlooked impact of the Garden State literally ends with the author fleeing said state for the Village. “That actually got me out of Jersey” is a funny last line given the subject matter. Maybe that’s the point. I suppose I’m biased, being one of the many who’s left Jersey for The City and has no intention of going back.

A well-done and beautiful collection for anyone bewitched or bewildered by the darling crowded stink of NYC.

(This review written while armpit to armpit with hundreds of other sweaty strangers from all walks of life aboard a delayed and overcrowded 10:30pm F train into Brooklyn. As it should be.)

[Micol Benimeo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disegnare una mappa non è un gesto neutrale, presuppone una scelta. Qualcosa entra nella mappa e qualcosa resta fuori (a meno di non voler fare la fine dell’Imperatore del paradosso di Borges).
In questo volume Rebecca Solnit e Joshua Jelly-Schapiro scelgono 26 mappe per raccontare New York, non raccontano tutte le New York possibili ma fanno un quadro approfondito e molto interessante di questa Nonstop Metropolis. C’è la New York della musica e quella del denaro, la New York delle rivolte e quella della libertà, c’è la New York delle donne e quella degli ebrei, c’è la New York capitale dei Caraibi e la New York stella del firmamento Black. Ci sono New York di cui avrete già sentito parlare e altre che scoprirete per la prima volta, New York che vi faranno commuovere e altre che vi faranno arrabbiare, New York di cui innamorarsi e altre che vorreste cambiare.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I checked this out from the Library purely because it had some essays from the lovely Garnette Cadogan. I am excited about his book on walking and wonder when it will be out. Solnit is always a summer-reading author generally for me, so it was the season. Though I don't have much feeling for New York as I have only visited once, it was still fun to read. I am reminded though about how people in the country of England get tired of "reading about London all the time. Some people seem to think that London is all there is." I feel the same way at times about New York and LA. But they are huge communities in their own right and have a lot going on. Of course there are some size differences in countries here, but I was reminded of those very English country-side conversations.

[Sean]

A mixed bag, of course, but generally more of a drag than I expected--I thought about abandoning it several times. There were a few standouts, and I really appreciated the appropriate attention paid to race throughout the collection.

I can't remember ever having said this before, but some of the maps were truly unreadable--the print was so small and cramped, and some of the color choices made it illegible.

I most enjoyed the essays in which native New Yorkers reminisced and some of the ones in which immigrants or children of immigrants contextualized their family experiences. I liked that playground essay too. I'm no expert, but some of the historically-oriented essays used anecdotes that felt a little pat--I do think some of the writers kind of helicoptered into NYC history.

[Frank Karioris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has to be one of the most well put together and aesthetically pleasing books that simultaneously is packed to the rafters with information and data. While it gave me any number of insights into NYC, at the same time, I think that the book is better read alongside others about the city; or having had more experience of it in person. As a next-to-new wanderer in NYC, there were a large amount of things that I just couldn't quite envision. But, this weekend's trip there may shine light on some of what I read. The book - and so many of the essays - is erudite beyond compare. I have it to thank for my next book, which I'll read on the plane there: EB White's 'Here is New York'.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting book format because it is at once at atlas and a cultural history book. The maps included in the book show where different cultural events happened, for example, where different songs were recorded. My favorite section is on the Jewish history in New York, so the book offers detailed information on topics that are not available in most tour books or atlases. The book is also a three part series including New York City, New Orleans and San Francisco. This theme is based on a quote by Tennessee Williams - "America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland." I believe Rebecca Solnit has also lived in all three cities, so there is some bias there as well, so I can't disagree with her.

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Third, and last, book in the series. So far I've had opportunity to flip through San Francisco, pore over New Orleans, and dive into New York in a mad rush--pretty much my experience with these cities, too. All three left me wishing for more money/time, to read the books, to read the cities, to make my own maps of my own town.
The essays in this edition hit me harder than the maps, maybe bc NYC is such a layered palimpsest that visual representations quickly become unreadable. Maps lay things out; stories lay things down.

[Raad · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I picked up this collection of essays, I was drawn by the cool map of female writers/artists by subway stops that I'd seen several friends circulating. While a couple of the essays were already familiar as I'd seen them in the New Yorker et al, seeing it all together in this lovely collection reminds you of how important it is to step outside the box while mapping a city that you think you know and yet one that's so large that you will never stop finding new things. Solnit at her best-- giving us a much-needed lens into my most favorite city in the world. Definitely worth owning.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays in this collection are interesting reads, especially if you are a passionate New Yorker. I learned a few things and revisited many of my favorite NYC neighborhoods. Although the book is well-designed for the maps, it is unfortunately designed for reading. It's clumsy to hold because of the thick chipboard cover and the elongated size. And the typeset is meh in terms of ease of reading. Dear book designer, next time please find a better balance between the nice aesthetic and being friendly to readers.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are lots of ways to look at New York City...here is a book of maps, but not just geographic maps...maps of people, food, history. Each cleverly designed map (water, money, wildlife) includes a well-written essay about the issue: "What is a Jew?" "Mysterious land of Shaolin."

The book gives a fair look at the greater New York essay and includes a good essay about the forgotten borough--Staten Island. It even gives a shout out to New Jersey!

For you New York geeks...and if you love maps.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An “atlas” of New York which looks at the USA’s largest city from multiple perspectives, from history to linguistics to hip-hop. The maps themselves are pretty cool, though some are more successful than others. But it’s the accompanying essays that really shine. They’re by several different authors, but by and large they’re original and enlightening. Reading this book reminds me of taking a 24-hour walk around all 5 boroughs of NYC (which was the subject of one of the more memorable chapters), it’s a deep dive into a rich and diverse subject.

[Olivia]

Ended up skimming a lot of the essays because I was most interested in the maps, but there was a lot of decent & interesting theorizing going on in here! I am going to get soooo into maps it’s crazy. I wish that some of these were more creative/broke the bounds of what maps could be but also I get that that wasn’t entirely the point of this project

I like the way this mythologizes the city, it’s a little corny to do that sometimes but it’s real & that’s how it feels to be there like you are standing in a myth

[Vinny Minchillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third of the book is hard core partisan politics that belies the promise of the book. (The author works hard to convince us Occupy Wall Street was a milestone in NYC history. It wasn't.) But if you start with the section on water and power and move on from there, it's an interesting look at the city effectively juxtaposing things that you would never put together. And by all means, skip the introduction, that's 30 minutes you're never getting back.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive mix of essays tied together by maps of unexpected combinations (e.g., whaling and publishing; wildlife and LGBTQ life; police complaints and green spaces) and others straightforward (city planning; Wu-Tang Clan influences; languages in Queens). It's a great representation of the wild diversity and history that emanates from NYC and a gift to those who know it.