Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: Fifty Years of New York Magazine
Product ID: 49841171
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New York, the city. New York, the magazine. A celebration. The great story of New York City in the past half-century has been its near collapse and miraculous rebirth. A battered town left for dead, one that almost a million people abandoned and where those who remained had to live behind triple deadbolt locks, was reinvigorated by the twinned energies of starving artists and financial white knights. Over the next generation, the city was utterly transformed. It again became the capital of wealth and innovation, an engine of cultural vibrancy, a magnet for immigrants, and a city of endless possibility. It was the place to be—if you could afford it. Since its founding in 1968, New York Magazine has told the story of that city’s constant morphing, week after week. Covering culture high and low, the drama and scandal of politics and finance, through jubilant moments and immense tragedies, the magazine has hit readers where they live, with a sensibility as fast and funny and urbane as New York itself. From its early days publishing writers like Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and Gloria Steinem to its modern incarnation as a laboratory of inventive magazine-making, New York has had an extraordinary knack for catching the Zeitgeist and getting it on the page. It was among the originators of the New Journalism, publishing legendary stories whose authors infiltrated a Black Panther party in Leonard Bernstein’s apartment, introduced us to the mother-daughter hermits living in the dilapidated estate known as Grey Gardens, launched Ms. Magazine, branded a group of up-and-coming teen stars “the Brat Pack,” and effectively ended the career of Roger Ailes. Again and again, it introduced new words into the conversation—from “foodie” to “normcore”—and spotted fresh talent before just about anyone. Along the way, those writers and their colleagues revealed what was most interesting at the forward edge of American culture—from the old Brooklyn of Saturday Night Fever to the new Brooklyn of artisanal food trucks, from the Wall Street crashes to the hedge-fund spoils, from The Godfather to Girls —in ways that were knowing, witty, sometimes weird, occasionally vulgar, and often unforgettable. On “The Approval Matrix,” the magazine’s beloved back-page feature, New York itself would fall at the crossroads of highbrow and lowbrow, and more brilliant than despicable. (Most of the time.) Marking the magazine’s fiftieth birthday, Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: 50 Years of New York draws from all that coverage to present an enormous, sweeping, idiosyncratic picture of a half-century at the center of the world. Through stories and images of power and money, movies and food, crises and family life, it constitutes an unparalleled history of that city’s transformation, and of a New York City institution as well. It is packed with behind-the-scenes stories from New York ’s writers, editors, designers, and journalistic subjects—and frequently overflows its own pages onto spectacular foldouts. It’s a big book for a big town. Review: Worth the price - I did not expect the book to be so heavy. I brought this as a gift and if I realized its weight, I would have had it delivered directly to the recipient. Great overview of New York City. Review: How Could a Power Supply Be Worth Five Stars? - As soon as the train left for the airport, I realized that I had left the power supply for my computer at home. I found the FINsix Dart 65W in an airport store. It was expensive, but I had to work in Europe. It's a power supply. How could it be worth five stars? Of course, it charges my computer (and many other brands), but I discovered that it is so small that I can just keep it in my back pack so I always had power for my computer. I don't have to remember to bring the power supply from home, and I never run out of power because I forgot it. That's worth five stars. I liked it so much that I bought one for my son, who travels for work. It cost about half as much on line as in the airport. Then one day at work, I needed it for our system programmer to install a big program, and his mouth dropped when he saw how small the FINsix is. I just bought him one as a gift. . . . 5 STARS! (No. I'm a real person.)
| Best Sellers Rank | #117,939 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #31 in City Photography #34 in Lifestyle Photography #67 in Journalism Writing Reference (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.8 out of 5 stars 134 Reviews |
C**E
Worth the price
I did not expect the book to be so heavy. I brought this as a gift and if I realized its weight, I would have had it delivered directly to the recipient. Great overview of New York City.
M**L
How Could a Power Supply Be Worth Five Stars?
As soon as the train left for the airport, I realized that I had left the power supply for my computer at home. I found the FINsix Dart 65W in an airport store. It was expensive, but I had to work in Europe. It's a power supply. How could it be worth five stars? Of course, it charges my computer (and many other brands), but I discovered that it is so small that I can just keep it in my back pack so I always had power for my computer. I don't have to remember to bring the power supply from home, and I never run out of power because I forgot it. That's worth five stars. I liked it so much that I bought one for my son, who travels for work. It cost about half as much on line as in the airport. Then one day at work, I needed it for our system programmer to install a big program, and his mouth dropped when he saw how small the FINsix is. I just bought him one as a gift. . . . 5 STARS! (No. I'm a real person.)
H**Y
AMAZING 50 YEARS OF NYC
I originally bought this book as a coffee table book, but to my surprise, it was full of beautiful stories and pictures that were so compelling, it took my breath away! I LOVE THIS BOOK! The book is oversize and weighs a lot, but looks amazing on my coffee table. I am a very happy camper!
G**Y
Bought it for a gift to a friend of mine ...
Bought it for a gift to a friend of mine who reads the NEW YORK all the time, so why not!
B**1
How much The Trumps were in the magazine. I felt sick just thinking about what the end of that story is. 👎
It was like a history lesson, that I had lived through, unfortunately not in New York. Love it 💋💋💋
N**S
Great history.
I gave this to a former New Yorker for Christmas. It is all in there. Great history.
D**Y
Five Stars
Our Daughter who loves New York was very excited about receiving this book for Christmas!
K**S
Five Stars
excellent in any ways - great design, great texts, it is a heavyweight champion
R**N
Half a century at the centre of the world
A suitably sumptuous book to celebrate fifty years of the cities leading weekly, of course, there is that other weekly with the addition of ER on its name and that, too, has plenty of listing information but the readership is as much the east coast liberal elite as well as city dwellers. The editors took the wise decision to avoid dividing the years into decades and looking at each in detail, which tends to be the usual format for anniversary books, instead they summed it up in eight chapters: Power; Midnight; Food; Crisis; Living; Culture; Family; Style. Each of these picks out the highs and lows of how it effected New York folk. It's worth saying that this is a highly visual book, covers, photos and pages from the magazine are reproduced or the articles reset, for example, Bernie Madoff's March 2, 2009 cover fills a page and the next spread has a reprint of the article by Steve Fishman and a graphic of the original spread in the magazine. There are eight two page fold-outs with covers and reproduced pages for various subjects like Nixon, Trump, food, design, celebrity et cetera. A couple of items I would have expected to see but are absent, one -- the commercial architecture of the city, there have been some very significant skyscrapers erected in the last fifty years and two -- fifty years of covers. OK, 2600 of them maybe going too far, as it is think there are probably around two hundred throughout the book. Pages eighteen to twenty-one has a hundred of them. Looking at a page of covers confirms that the magazine has had some very talented Art Directors over the years, it always looked a beautifully designed publication. Overall, I thought this was a handsome, pictorial reminder of an essential weekly read. Incidentally, when you get your copy remove the cover because the reverse opens out to a large poster called The Approval Matrix, everything from highbrow to lowbrow, the NYC taste hierarchies revealed.
L**A
Espectacular retrato de una época y de una ciudad
No es un libro de fotografías, es un reportaje inmenso con textos y fotos de la New York Magazine desde su fundación en 1968. New York desde el punto de vista de sus protagonistas, famosos y no famosos, y de las cosas que han pasado allí, de las modas, los estilos, incluso de los tipos de letra.
G**I
For NY lovers
A collection of pictures and articles about life in NYC. Great book.
M**N
Outstanding
It is like a journey in time! Wonderful and pompous coffeetablebook!
M**N
Beautiful photography and historical insights into New York City
Terrific photography and interesting historical commentaries .
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