POSTCARDS FROM MANHATTAN: Sights & Sentiments from the Last Century

This postcard-shaped, spiral-bound book gives readers a walking tour of Manhattan, from Battery Park to the top of the island via a terrific set of vintage and contemporary postcards. The images generally document one or another landmark building or site straightforwardly—with the rare fanciful or moody shot. Yet what sometimes emerges is less a collection of postcards than one man's overwrought love letter to New York. Historian Lankevich captions the cards in an informative, but often deliriously over-the-top manner: the Stock Exchange is "one of the most intimidating places on earth." Lankevich also writes, "Everything about Manhattan is stupendous and inadequate....It is a place of blind ambitions, intellectual hauteur, and frightening indifference." One need not be a Brooklynite to ask: "Everything?" Yet when the original inscriptions are visible or provided by Lankevich, they are bizarre, hilarious and romantic. "The Matt Hudsons" write: "Well Chas! This is some place. Boy, no place for an Okie! They don't even speak our language." One shows an entire street covered with hanging laundry, with the mysterious scrawled inscription: "Please—stop praying, if you don't, we will all be drowned. Jack." The overall impression is of a group of transfixed outsiders looking in. Combine that with vintage drawings and photographs of places like the Empire State Building, Riverside Drive mansions, a teeming Hester Street, and cheesy productions incorporating all of the most famous at once—and the result is an unusual perspective on a much-vaunted metropolis. (Feb.)