Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation
By Thomas Dyja
You will have a hard time getting through Thomas Dyjaâs âNew York, New York, New York,â mostly because there is an idea on every page, if not in every paragraph â and usually attached to a perfect line from the host of sources he has collected for this history of New York City over its last four rollicking decades.
Here is the journalist Michael Tomasky fretting that âthereâs only so much wholesomeness New York can take,â the graphic designer Tibor Kalman advising us that Times Square âshould be a zoo, like the rest of New York, but a well-maintained zoo instead of a depressed, unemployed and crack-smoking kind of zoo,â and the philanthropist Andrew Heiskell promising a crime-free Bryant Park: âAll the hiding places have been eliminated.â Here is Spy magazine headlining Rudy Giuliani as âThe Toughest Weenie in America,â Jules Feiffer calling Elaineâ�