MEMO: Suggested Reading List
SUGGESTED READING LIST for M.S. STUDENTS
To help you to develop an understanding of New York City and its issues, past and present, the faculty recommends the following books and Web sites. The list is long, (although by no means exhaustive) and we don’t expect you to read every title on it. However, we do ask that you familiarize yourself with “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of master planner Robert Moses.
In addition, we suggest that you select an anthology or two, a couple of the classics (fiction and/or nonfiction), and several titles in subject areas that interest you journalistically. If you’re an aspiring education writer, for instance, you might want to read the books listed under “Education.”
Lastly, you should get into the habit of reading at least a couple of New York newspapers every day – if you live outside the metropolitan area, you can read them online – and also checking the Web sites of some of the local broadcast stations. This will not only acquaint you with the city that will serve as your laboratory during the time that you’re here, but also with the journalism that is going on here – and the media outlets to which you may wish to eventually pitch your stories.
Recommended reading:
Robert Caro: “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” (New York: Knopf, 1974)
Classic non-fiction books about New York:
- EB White: “Here is New York” (Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1949)
- Meyer Berger: “The Eight Million: Journal of a New York Correspondent” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942)
- A.J. Liebling: “Back Where I Came From” (North Point Press, 1990)
- Willie Morris: “New York Days” (Little, Brown, 1993)
Classic novels about New York:
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The Great Gatsby” (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925)
- Betty Smith: “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (Harper & Row, 1943)
- Tom Wolfe: “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1988)
- Pete Hamill: “Snow in August” (Little Brown, 1997)
- Bel Kaufman: “Up the Down Staircase” (Prentice-Hall, 1964)
Anthologies:
- Dan Barry: “City Lights: Stories About New York” (St. Martin’s Press, 2007)
- David Remnick (ed): “Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker” (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
- Phillip Lopate: “Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan” (Anchor, 2004)
- Connie Rosenblum (ed.): “New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of the New York Times” (NYU Press, 2005)
- Pete Hamill: Piecework: “Writings on Men & Women, Fools and Heroes, Lost Cities, Vanished Calamities and How the Weather Was” (Little, Brown, 1996)
9/11:
- Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn: “102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers” (Times Books, 2005)
- David Halberstam: “Firehouse” (Hyperion, 2002)
- Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins: “Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11” (HarperCollins, 2006)
- Tram Nguyen: “We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11” (Beacon Press, 2005)
Criminal Justice:
- Greg Donaldson: “The Ville” (Ticknor & Fields, 1993)
- Brian MacDonald: “My Father’s Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD” (Plume, 2000)
Education:
- Samuel G. Freedman: “Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School” (HarperTrade, 1991)
- Alec Klein: “A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America’s Best High Schools” (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
- Diane Ravitch: “The Great School Wars of New York City 1805-1973” (Basic Books, 1974)
Immigration:
- Joseph Berger: “The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York” (Ballantine Books, 2007)
- Tram Nguyen: “We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11” (Beacon Press, 2005)
Media:
- Kate Darnton, Kayce Freed Jennings and Lynn Sherr (eds.):”Peter Jennings: A Reporter’s Life” (PublicAffairs, 2007)
- Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones: “The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times” (Little, Brown, 1999)
- Gay Talese: “The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World” (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1969)
Life in New York:
- LynNell Hancock: “Hands To Work: The Stories of Three Families Racing the Welfare Clock” (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2002)
- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: “Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx” (Scribner, 2003)
- Jim Dwyer: “Subway Lives: 24 Hours in the Life of the New York Subway” (Crown, 1991)
Politics and Business:
- Jack Newfield and Wayne Barrett: “City for Sale” (Harper & Row, 1988)
- Jim Sleeper: “The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York” (W.W. Norton, 1990)
- James B. Stewart: ”Den of Thieves” (Simon & Schuster, 1992)
Race/Ethnicity:
- Alex Haley: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (Mass Market/Paperback, Reissue 1989)
- Jervis Anderson: “This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait 1900-1950” (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1991)
- Diane Ravitch: “The Great School Wars of New York City 1805-1973” (Basic Books, 1974)
- Samuel G. Freedman: “Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church”
- Jim Sleeper: “The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York” (W.W. Norton, 1990) Arlene Arlene Morgan, Alice Pifer, Keith Woods: “The Authentic Voice” (Columbia University Press, 2006)
Religion:
- Lis Harris: “Holy Days: The World of the Hasidic Family” (Summit Books, 1985)
- Samuel G. Freedman: “Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church” (HarperCollins, 1994)
Sports:
- Michael Shapiro: “The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers and Their Final Pennant Race Together” (Doubleday, 2003)
- Jimmy Breslin: “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Year” (Viking, 1963)
Technology & Media:
- Henry Jenkins: “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide” (NYU, 2008)
- Clay Shirky: “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” (Penguin Press, 2008)
- Andrew Lih: “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia” (Hyperion, 2009)
City sites:
- www.nyc.gov
- http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd
- http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp
- http://www.brooklyn-usa.org
- http://www.queensbp.org
- http://www.statenislandusa.com
- http://www.mbpo.org
- http://bronxboropres.nyc.gov
Online & Print Media:
- http://nytimes.com
- www.nydailynews.com
- http://www.nypost.com
- http://www.newsday.com
- http://www.silive.com
- www.villagevoice.com
- http://www.nysun.com
- http://www.amny.com
- www.nypress.com
- http://ny.metro.us
- http://www.observer.com
- www.brooklyneagle.com
- www.queenschronicle.com
- http://www.queenstribune.com
- http://www.nypress.com
- www.bronxbeat.org
- http://gothamist.com
- http://gothamgazette.com
- http://www.citylimits.org
- http://nymag.com
- www.cjr.org
Broadcast media:
