The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857

I have spent a great deal of time, over decades, studying the history of my home, New York City. Some of the great works are written by scholars familiar to students of Gotham's history: Wallace, Burroughs, Jackson, Bender, et al., and the list of biographers of New York's most famous and influential citizens would fill pages. But, without fanfare, in the background, Edward K. Spann has written some of the most remarkable and comprehensive histories about New York City. I first read his "Gotham at War" some years back, and it was a real eye-opener to New York's complicated role during the Civil War. (See my review.) "The New Metropolis: 1840-1857" is no less a revelation. This era is hardly noted in many studies; New York during the Revolution, the Erie Canal's construction, and certainly the Civil War and thereafter, have been fodder for many great historians. But Professor Spann has tackled the two decades (more or less) that really turned New York City from a big city to a metropolis. These pages are populated by the great financiers and great swindlers; brilliant civil leaders and corrupt politicians; people with the best intentions (who usually never got a chance to complete their dreams) and people with nothing but personal gain in their sights (who usually did fulfill their greedy wishes). The "characters" of whom I'd always wanted to know more about--like Fernando Wood and Charles Loring Brace--are given the spotlights they have so long deserved. But behind it all is a nameless, faceless character: the furious dynamics of New York City. Professor Spann's conclusion that, in spite of the inept political system, turbulent financial markets, intolerance toward the poor, the Blacks, and the immigrants, and the self-centered hunger of most New Yorkers, somehow, Gotham managed to take care of most of its citizens, and draw tremendous political, economic and cultural resources into its borders. Professor Spann's research is impeccable, and his conclusion hard to debate. This is a dazzling, encyclopedic--but not overwhelming--volume that belongs on the bookshelf of everybody who considers him/herself a student of New York City and America.

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