Reading list · 10 books
New York history: where to start
Books that cover the city from the Dutch settlement to the present, from one-volume histories to a reference shelf.
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The history
The Island at the Center of the World (opens Bookshop.org)
The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
Russell Shorto · 2004
Shorto draws on the translated Dutch colonial records to reconstruct New Amsterdam under Peter Stuyvesant, and argues that its tolerant, commercial culture shaped the country.
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The history
Gotham (opens Bookshop.org)
A History of New York City to 1898
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace · 1999
Burrows and Wallace cover New York from its earliest settlement to consolidation in 1898, in a single volume of more than a thousand pages. It won the Pulitzer Prize for History.
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The history
Greater Gotham (opens Bookshop.org)
A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919
Mike Wallace · 2017
Wallace picks up at consolidation and runs through the First World War, covering the subways, skyscrapers, immigration, labor fights and the birth of modern city politics.
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The history
City of Dreams (opens Bookshop.org)
The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York
Tyler Anbinder · 2016
Each wave of arrivals, from the Dutch to recent immigrants, and how they found work, housing and political voice in the city. Anbinder organizes it by group.
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The history
The Epic of New York City (opens Bookshop.org)
A Narrative History
Edward Robb Ellis · 1966
One continuous narrative history from Henry Hudson's arrival in 1609 into the 1960s, built by Ellis from newspapers, diaries and letters.
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The history
Low Life (opens Bookshop.org)
Lures and Snares of Old New York
Luc Sante · 1991
Sante describes the city's underworld from the 1840s to the 1920s: the saloons, brothels, gangs and gambling dens, and the reformers and journalists who wrote about them.
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The history
The Power Broker (opens Bookshop.org)
Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Robert A. Caro · 1974
Robert Moses built the parkways, bridges and housing projects that reshaped the city without ever winning an election. Caro's biography shows how, and who was displaced along the way. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
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The history
Fear City (opens Bookshop.org)
New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics
Kim Phillips-Fein · 2017
The 1975 near-bankruptcy, the bankers, unions and officials who negotiated the rescue, and the austerity that followed, from Phillips-Fein.
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Reference
The Encyclopedia of New York City (opens Bookshop.org)
The New York Metropolis
Kenneth T. Jackson · 2010
Jackson edits this one-volume reference with entries on neighborhoods, institutions, people, buildings and events across the five boroughs, for looking up a name or a date.
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Reference
Empire City (opens Bookshop.org)
New York Through the Centuries
Kenneth T. Jackson and David S. Dunbar · 2002
Jackson and Dunbar collect primary sources from Dutch-era letters to twentieth-century speeches and reporting, each with a short introduction that places it in the city's history.
Chosen by the New York Explained desk. No publisher pays for a place on this list. Updated September 2026.
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