Big book, big city - review of the book 'The Encyclopedia of New York City

Splendid in parts, The Encyclopedia of New York, is less satisfactory in dealing with the city as a whole. Considering that much of the book was written by trained historians and other scholars, there is every reason to hold it to the Diderot standard which calls not only for the gathering up of knowledge, but the setting forth of "some general plan" to make it understandable. New York demands a good deal of explaining not only because it was and is so big, but also because its influence in the nation and world has been disproportionately great, even taking size into account. What we have on our hands is something more than Los Angeles doubled.

The apparent strategy for explaining New York has been to designate the major entries such as "economy," "government and politics" and the borough articles as the vehicles to convey a sense of the city's growth, development and general history. If contributors to those and other major entries had been invited to produce broadly interpretive essays, cross-referenced to shorter factual pieces, then the results might have been satisfactory. But cross-referencing is at best haphazard and often nonexistent here, suggesting the absence of a thoughtful and systematic effort to connect related entries. Without support from shorter articles, the longer ones tend to sag under the burden of 300 years of history.

Further, instead of exhorting experts to take an authoritative approach, the editorial watchword appears to have been caution, resulting in "just-the-facts-in-chronological-order" entries, the very sort of writing which can make "encyclopedia" a synonym for dull. Also, caution seems to have dictated that contributors not venture even a glance beyond the city limits to put New York into state, national and world perspective. Thus the political duel between city and upstate legislators, played out generation after generation in Albany, passes largely unnoticed. This disregard for other places also makes it difficult to discern the ways New York can be reckoned either typical or distinct from the rest of urban America. Nor is there much consideration given to how New York has appeared to outsiders. This is important because the very initials NYC have long summoned up in the hinterland, feelings of loathing, envy and awe. For some, New York can be the sinkhole of corruption while for others, it is the glorious refuge from American provincialism. For left-wingers, it is the fount of predatory capitalism; for the right, the welfare state run amok. And somewhere, if only for the sake of posterity, it might have been said that in the last half of this century New York became the most influential city in the world.