Subway Lives: 24 Hours in the Life of the New York City Subway

This isn't likely to find many readers west of the Hudson, but residents of New York City's boroughs should take note, for although one doesn't expect to be enthralled by a virtual monograph on the New York City subway, talent will out and Dwyer brings it off. The well-integrated statistical material is impressive: the subway transports 3.7 million paying riders daily, plus an estimated 169,000 turnstile jumpers; the Transit Authority's ``money room'' is the ``world's busiest private currency processing enterprise''; the system is the only one anywhere to operate 24 hours a day. The book makes us privy to TA politics and profiles managers, including David Gunn, who solved the graffiti problem, saving the system $10 million annually in cleanups. Verging on the smarmy, however, are some of the human interest stories, one about a welfare mother giving birth on the subway, another of a retarded boy taking his first solo ride. Dwyer, a New York Newsday reporter whose beat is the subway, presents a balanced depiction of the crime that makes riders fearful, not sensationalizing its frequency. And he's on the mark when he comments, ``Only in the dim warrens of the subway . . . can the full spectrum of city life . . . be glimpsed, felt, and at times even understood.'' (Nov.)