New York is a city like no other. Through the centuries, she's been embraced and reviled, worshipped and feared, praised and battered--all the while standing at the crossroads of American politics, business, society, and culture. Pulitzer Prize winner Teresa Carpenter, a lifelong diary enthusiast, scoured the archives of libraries, historical societies, and private estates to assemble here an almost holographic view of this iconic metropolis. Starting on January 1 and continuing day by day through the year, these journal entries are selected from four centuries of writing--revealing vivid and compelling snapshots of life in the Capital of the World.

"Today I arrived by train in New York City . . . and instantly fell in love with it. Silently, inside myself, I yelled: I should have been born here!"--Edward Robb Ellis, May 22, 1947

Includes diary excerpts from Sherwood Anderson - Albert Camus - Noël Coward - Dorothy Day - John Dos Passos - Thomas Edison - Allen Ginsberg - Keith Haring - Henry Hudson - Anne Morrow Lindbergh - H. L. Mencken - John Cameron Mitchell - Julia Rosa Newberry - Eugene O'Neill - Edgar Allan Poe - Theodore Roosevelt - Elizabeth Cady Stanton - Alexis de Tocqueville - Mark Twain - Gertrude Vanderbilt - Andy Warhol - George Washington - Walt Whitman - and many others

"The most convivial and unorthodox history of New York City one is likely to come across."--The New York Times

"A must-read for anyone who has fallen in love with the Big Apple."--New York Journal of Books

"An absolute masterpiece."--The Atlantic