I really took my time and savored this collection. Some of the stories were excellent and I can't wait to go to Book Riot next month with a deeper understanding of this city!

The anti-hero in this New York City telling is a bum. Indeed, much to the chagrin of liberals, those that choose to live in the gutters and alleyways of our great cities are not "homeless." A homeless person is somebody displaced by fire, flood or some other natural disaster. A bum is somebody that has consciously opted out of society for whatever reason. So we have for ourselves a wide array of adjectives to use when describing a bum: vagrant, hobo, beggar, derelict, guttersnipe, vagabond and s...

(23) This book is a collection of pieces on the duality that exists in early twenty-first century New York. For those considering living their dream and moving to the myth that is New York, this is a must-read. Having spent parts of eight summers there, I suppose I have that same dream too. So many great pieces on housing and the character of the city and those who live there. None more poignant than that written by John's brother Tim. "I did not fully understand New York before I moved there, b...

Wow, John Freeman is an incredibly loathsome creep -- he and his family withheld an inheritance from his mentally ill brother and he never opened up his door to his brother when he wound up homeless in NYC. But rest assured, he has the good grace to "...often like his photographs on Facebook." Such brotherly love just warms the heart, doesn't it?You can read about his hand-wringing over his homeless brother while he looked down at the homeless from the comfort of his posh duplex in Manhattan he...

this book has some of the best short story writing i've ever read and also made me realize i probably can never live in nyc because it would tear me to shreds

Being a sucker for books set in NYC, when I saw this anthology reviewed in The Guardian, there wasn't too much of a 'hard sell' required for me to buy it, and it turned out to be a collection that I, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed.The collection includes both fiction and non fiction from writers I have previously read and enjoyed, like Colum McCann, Bill Cheng, Edmund White and Dinaw Megestu, other 'names' including Teju Cole, Jonathan Dee, Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave Eggers and Zadie Smit...

"The care that often may mean the difference between a child who can speak and one who cannot is meted out not according to need, or even zip code, but according to which parents have the resources -- money, and perhaps just as important, time ...""The best it's possible to do, ethically, is to give to the limits of what we can without causing ourselves so much pain that we disintegrate. Those limits are always inadequate, but they're the only thing that matters, and fuck anyone forever who atte...

These are several short stories from various authors centered around class, race, and gentrification issues in NYC. If you've lived in NYC for at least a year it's definitely worth a read. You won't gain much reading these without some context of living here. I've been a resident for 2+ years now, so almost all the stories resonated.

Several years ago, I bought an apartment in Manhattan with an inheritance passed to me from my grandmother, who was the daughter of a former attorney for Standard Oil. She outlived three husbands and managed her money well, and in one fell swoop from beyond the grave hoisted me out of one social class and into another. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, my younger brother was living in a homeless shelter. That's how Freeman starts his introduction to Tales of Two Cities. I am delighted to

I'm finally finished with this book; it took me about 10 billion years but I'm not entirely sure that's the book's fault. I would absolutely recommend this book, especially to people who like short stories or want to start getting in to them. MOST of the stories are super interesting insights into the huge wealth gap in NYC and can really be translated to the issues facing any large cities in the US. I was especially interested in and impressed by the stories and essays that explored and discuss...

Great to see a book that addresses the homeless and the widening gap between the ultra-rich and the poor.

This review originally appeared on Everyday eBookThe Many Faces of NYC: Tales of Two Cities by John FreemanNew York City: If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. The glam, the glitz, the money, the power. This is certainly not how the majority of New Yorkers live. There are multitudes barely scraping by -- living in homeless shelters or on the street, in apartments with sleazy landlords doing their best to get them out to make room for renters who will pay more money. As Mayor deBlasi...

“New York is a tale of two cities—there is the Rich New York and the Poor New York—but it is the tale of the Rich New York that we most often see and hear about.” (page 215)That quote from Tim Freeman’s story titled Home sums up this whole book. Indeed New York as the greatest city in the world is the common known image. Even TV shows or movies often show that New York also often broke people’s dream, but somehow it was portrayed in such a glorious way (and it’ll be alright in the end.) Reading

I was drawn to this because of Zadie Smith and Junot Diaz (obviously exactly what the marketing team intended), but was sorely disappointed by both. I expected a collection of short stories and essays set in New York that address some of the issues the city faces, and while there was some of that, this was mainly a hodgepodge of various writers' experiences in the city, many of which seemed a little irrelevant to what I think this collection was supposed to do. There are two or three stories tha...

It is always heartwarming to see how a city brings people together - even a city as big and as diverse as NYC. The tales here are not only about the two cities, but about so many cities, so many experiences, so many things touching us, annoying us, leaving us baffled and so on. For an European, there are stories here that seem exotic - especially since one has only been in NY as a tourist. But the thing is, there is a bit of something that one can relate to, some bits and pieces of feelings and

Koan: When the underrepresented get represented in every essay and story in a book, do they get to keep the prefix under? I hate to criticize a book by what is left out, but when the title says "Two Cities" - shouldn't the bugaboo of wealthy, gentrified New York be given a voice, too?That said, it includes interesting and informative pieces, among some that are easily skim-able.

An eclectic and excellent collection of short stories, essays and pieces of reportage covering wealth disparity in New York City. As with all collections, some pieces are better than others but I can't say there was a single piece here that I felt was below average. Well worth picking up, especially for New Yorkers.

A real mixed bag in terms of quality of stories and writing. A worthwhile read overall. It contains some gems and does a good job of exposing the paradox of the simultaneously very Rich and very Poor city of New York. Sadly, the disparities are even greater now than when this book was written.

In this anthology, writers from all walks of life (but all with affiliations to New York), share stories about New York City's inequality. I especially enjoyed some of the fiction pieces and memoirs, but found a couple of the think pieces to bland and unoriginal.

One of the finest collection of short stories and non-fiction essays I believe I've ever read. You'll feel as though you've lived in New York by the time you finish.