Marc Aronson, "Four Streets and a Square: A History of Manhattan and the New York Idea" (Candlewick Press, 2021)

New Books in American Studies · Apr 20, 2022 · 41m

The poet Walt Whitman wrote in his 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass that New York was a “City of the world! (for all races are here, All lands of the earth make contributions here…”) How that city came to be on the island of Manhattan, and what it has meant for the United States and the world over the centuries, is the subject of Marc Aronson’s new book Four Streets and a Square: A History of Manhattan and the New York Idea (Candlewick Press, 2021). Aronson argues that the density of Manhattan has put different kinds of people close to each other--fostering curiosity, conflict and new cultural…