The World in a City

Starred review from September 15, 2007
New York, always a city of immigrants, has in the past half century attracted new residents of myriad ethnicities. Long-established Italian, Irish, Greek, and Jewish enclaves now sit alongside, share space with, or are being transformed into communities from Uzbekistan, Somalia, Guyana, and Bangladesh. "New York Times" reporter Berger ("Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust") explores 22 neighborhoods citywide to learn the folkways of people living on borders between twoor morecultures. Berger details a controversy among Orthodox Jews in Midwood, Brooklyn, as to whether the municipal drinking water is kosher. He travels to work with a Palestinian woman who commutes four hours daily from the Bronxs Bedford Park neighborhood for a $7-an-hour part-time job. He considers ways immigrants nurture connections to their homelands, from phone cards and videoconferencing to the expatriate Ghanaian practice of buying a home in Ghana, absent definite plans to move back. In his brisk but detailed, respectful, and captivating tour, Berger considers economics, immigration policy, adaptation, identity, domestic issues, and the awkward intersection of American and homeland cultural expectations. Highly recommended for New York libraries and for all travel and social sciences collections.Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington Libs., OH

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2007
New York City hosts the headquarters of the United Nations, and the citys patchwork of neighborhoods analogously reflect a microcosmic Pangaea where nearly every nationality enjoys an enclave. There the newly arrived celebrate their ethnic origins, adding new harmonies within an ever-diversifying American nation. Berger introduces his readers to this amazing metropolis, spotlighting some of the citys unique denizens: a Chinese cobbler plying his trade on Manhattans thoroughfares, an Italian barber serving an overwhelmingly Hispanic clientele, a Ghanaian cabbie, and an Indian cardiologist. Not all goes well in the struggle to succeed. Bukharan men tend to beat their wives. Ethnic Indians escaping Guyana endure humiliation at the hands of immigrants who arrived in America directly from the subcontinent. For travelers eager to explore these city neighborhoods for themselves, Berger catalogs a few shops, eateries, and other ethnically significant sites at the end of each chapter.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)