Maximum City: The Biography of New York

by Michael Pye

Maximum City is the biography of New York City. It has an exact to use the past to understand how New York came to be its glorious, dangerous self. From the first struggling settlers to the glitz of Nouvellle Society, it tells how the myth of New York was formed, and the calamities and realities that underlie all the headline assumptions about the Corruption, Excess, Glory, Danger and the sensuality which brings its bleak streets to life. But it also asks why - why cramped Manhattan should be high society's city; why such a metropolis fell into the hands of mobsters and con-men; why travellers always go in fear of its startling streets; why anyone who wanted success, a new life, even a new sex, had to come to Maximum City. It is full of the voices of New Yorkers, past and present, drawn from the newly available archives and direct reporting, as well as from letters, diaries, movies, maps and archaeologists' finds.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

437 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Michael Pye (b. 1946) is a writer who reported on business for The Sunday Times of London in the 1960s and 1970s. He has also authored many books, two of which are about the entertainment industry: The Movie Brats: How the Film Generation Took Over Hollywood (with Lynda Myles, 1979), and Moguls: Inside the Business of Show Business (1980).

Reviews

[Edward Champion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucy Sante, Robert A. Caro, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. Michael Pye clearly wants to add his name to this illustrious pantheon of New York chroniclers, but it doesn't quite work. It doesn't quite work because Pye doesn't have any particular focus. It doesn't quite work because it's incongruous and annoying to read a decently written poetic passage about some slice of New York, only to then read a chapter with pedestrian information we already know about Donald Manes, Lady Astor, Robert Moses, et al. -- especially when just about every historian has done it better. I can't even begin to convey how frustrating this book was. Imagine going to see an attorney who is about to discuss your impending divorce and, before you can meet the attorney, there's some completely insane fire eater that you have to sit through just before that. Now I have nothing against fire eaters. I've not only been privileged to not only watch fire eaters perform, but I happen to be acquainted with one and we text every so often. But you went to the office to see the attorney. You're a wreck because your twelve-year marriage is over. And then a fucking fire eater shows up.

Do you get what I'm saying here?

By all rights, I should have loved this book. But I ended up becoming so deeply annoyed by it. Michael Pye's superficial research was awful at times. But the dude CAN write beautifully and even charmingly in other parts. (I particularly liked his passage about Frederick Law Olmstead.

I mean, New York City's history is so fucking fascinating that it is pretty much impossible to fuck it up. And yet Michael Pye does quite a number of times.

If I ever meet Michael Pye, I will issue him an edict never to set foot in my beloved metropolis again. How could you fuck NYC history up?

Having said that, I'm making this book sound far worse than it is. When it's good, it's good. When it's bad, it's very bad.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1991, the vignettes of life in NYC "today" heading off each chapter haven't got the freshest flavor, but the historical aspects are painstakingly researched and constitute the bulk of the book. Instead of a straight chronological approach, the author has divided the book into eight chapters, each covering a particular aspect of New York's contemporary identity and a workup of the underlying history contributing to its modern-day status: "Warnings to Travellers" (NY as mugging capitol of the world); "Audition City" (The city's emergence as the epicenter of the art, theater, and publishing world - and if you can make it there you can make it anywhere); "Minimum City" (graft, scam, corruption, and borough bosses); "Frontiers" (neighborhoods as ethnic tapestry) etc.

I enjoyed (or at least appreciated) the book for the most part; the research is solid and the historical anecdotes are plentiful. Perhaps too plentiful. At times they are whipped out one after the other in such a dizzying compendium of tidbits (often in a single paragraph) that the chapters seemed to occasionally lose focus and wallow in the details. Aside from that, and perhaps a certain lack of flow in the overall writing style which didn't always suit my taste, this was a pretty good read on the whole.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bought the book hoping the author writes about the city with deep understanding of culture and history and then linking back to today. However after a few chapters of reading I found the author is so deep into his showing off of random historical stories and make the reader feeling lost. Maybe it is just not for me or what I expected.