Jacob Riis's illustrated tour of New York's slums had an immediate and extraordinary impact on society, inspiring reforms that changed the face of the city. In 1890, when the book was published, the Lower East Side was a landscape of teeming streets and filthy tenements crowded with immigrants living in dreadful conditions. How the Other Half Lives brings them to life - the Italians, Jews, Bohemians (Czechs and Slovaks), Blacks, and Chinese - in precise descriptions of their habits and traditions, jobs and wages, rents paid and meals eaten, and explores the effects of crime, poverty, alcohol, and lack of education and opportunity on adults and children alike. Riis's reliance on specific, hard facts as the tools and weapons of social criticism pioneered the style of crusading journalism that continues today. His use of photographs (reproduced in this edition) to put faces to his stories was a landmark in photojournalism.
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Table of Contents: How the Other Half Lives 1 Genesis of the Tenement Appendix |
Jacob Riis (1849-1914) was a journalist and photographer born in Denmark.
Lucy Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium, and now lives in the Hudson River Valley. Her books include Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, The Other Paris, and Maybe the People Would Be the Times, and most recently , Nineteen Reservoirs. She has written for many periodicals, notably the New York Review of Books since 1981. Her honors include a Whiting Writer's Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman fellowships. Since 1999 she has taught writing and the history of photography at Bard College.
Target Age: 18 and up
Penguin Classics
Pub Date: November 01, 1997
ISBN: 9780140436792
0.51" H x 7.73" L x 5.09" W
256 pages
paperback