This well-written and sumptuously illustrated book is filled with surprises that add texture and richness to life in the Big Apple. Wild peacocks, parrots, and raccoons rather than the Bronx Zoo; cricket, lawn bowling, surfboarding, and pistol shooting rather than the Yankees and the Mets; a Japanese pagoda-inspired house and a Frank Lloyd Wright house rather than a Brooklyn brownstone or the Empire State building; wineries, rolling ladder manufacturers, and fishing tackle businesses rather than the New York Stock Exchange; key lime pies not seltzer; fragments of the Berlin Wall and Gaudi-like mosaic benches rather than the Guggenheim or the Met; a statue of Lenin rather than the Statue of Liberty.

Unexpected New York is about places, activities, events, and entities in New York City that surprise. These are not secret or hidden, nor necessarily off the beaten track, just not what the words New York City immediately call to mind. But perhaps the unexpected aspects of New York are what truly make its world-class diversity. If not quintessential New York, nonetheless, essential.