New Yorkers

A City and Its People in Our Time

By: Craig Taylor

Narrated by: Michael Braun, Ron Butler, Karen Chilton, Andrea Gallo, Catherine Ho, Maria Liatis, Nick Mills, Luis Moreno, Samara Naeymi, Richard Poe

2021, The Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize

A symphony of contemporary New York through the magnificent words of its people—from the best-selling author of Londoners.

In the first 20 years of the 21st century, New York City has been convulsed by terrorist attack, blackout, hurricane, recession, social injustice, and pandemic. New Yorkers weaves the voices of some of the city's best talkers into an indelible portrait of New York in our time—and a powerful hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people.

Best-selling author Craig Taylor has been hailed as "a peerless journalist and a beautiful craftsman" (David Rakoff), and acclaimed for the way he "fuses the mundane truth of conversation with the higher truth of art" (Michel Faber). In the wake of his celebrated book Londoners, Taylor moved to New York and spent years meeting regularly with hundreds of New Yorkers as diverse as the city itself. New Yorkers features 75 of the most remarkable of them, their fascinating true tales arranged in thematic sections that follow Taylor's growing engagement with the city.

Here are the uncelebrated people who propel New York each day—bodega cashier, hospital nurse, elevator repairman, emergency dispatcher. Here are those who wire the lights at the top of the Empire State Building, clean the windows of Rockefeller Center, and keep the subway running. Here are people whose experiences reflect the city's fractured realities: a Latina mother of a teenager jailed at Rikers, a BLM activist in the wake of police shootings. And here are those who capture the ineffable feeling of New York, such as a balloon handler in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or a security guard at the Statue of Liberty.

Vibrant and bursting with life, New Yorkers explores the nonstop hustle to make it; the pressures on new immigrants, people of color, and the poor; the constant battle between loving the city and wanting to leave it; and the question of who gets to be considered a "New Yorker". It captures the strength of an irrepressible city that—no matter what it goes through—dares call itself the greatest in the world.

©2021 Craig Taylor (P)2021 Penguin Random House Canada

Critic reviews

"COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way we live in and move around cities. So Craig Taylor's New Yorkers serves as welcome reminder of the can't-be-stopped NYC that we all know and love. The 10-years-in-the-making book paints a vibrant portrait of New York, delving into tales from every corner of the city as Taylor talks with a blind man who navigates the streets by smell, an electrician who keeps the lights on at the Empire State Building, and a rapper on the sounds of the city. These are quintessential stories from the people who make New York...well, New York." (Toronto Star)

"A teeming oral history.... [This] kaleidoscopic portrait captures the city's thrilling lexical diversity, as well as moments of grace, compassion, cruelty and racism." (The New Yorker)

"An engrossing, multihued 'oral portrait' of New York City as told by the people who live there.... Expertly edited and arranged, these striking snapshots make clear that in New York, 'the people are the texture.' Admirers of the Big Apple will be enthralled." (Publishers Weekly)