How the Other Half Lives
Studies among the Tenements of New York
Published on 15. April 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-0-674-04932-1 (ISBN)
Description
Since 1959 The John Harvard Library has been instrumental in publishing essential American writings in authoritative editions.
Jacob Riis's pioneering work of photojournalism takes its title from Rabelais's Pantagruel: "One half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth; considering that no one has yet written of that Country." An anatomy of New York City's slums in the 1880s, it vividly brought home to its first readers through the powerful combination of text and images the squalid living conditions of "the other half," who might well have inhabited another country. The book pricked the conscience of its readers and raised the tenement into a symbol of intransigent social difference. As Alan Trachtenberg makes clear in his introduction, it is a book that still speaks powerfully to us today of social injustice.
Except for the modernization of spelling and punctuation, the John Harvard Library edition of How the Other Half Lives reproduces the text of the first published book version of November 1890. For this edition, prints have been made from Riis's original photographs now in the archives of the Museum of the City of New York. Endnotes aid the contemporary reader.
Jacob Riis's pioneering work of photojournalism takes its title from Rabelais's Pantagruel: "One half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth; considering that no one has yet written of that Country." An anatomy of New York City's slums in the 1880s, it vividly brought home to its first readers through the powerful combination of text and images the squalid living conditions of "the other half," who might well have inhabited another country. The book pricked the conscience of its readers and raised the tenement into a symbol of intransigent social difference. As Alan Trachtenberg makes clear in his introduction, it is a book that still speaks powerfully to us today of social injustice.
Except for the modernization of spelling and punctuation, the John Harvard Library edition of How the Other Half Lives reproduces the text of the first published book version of November 1890. For this edition, prints have been made from Riis's original photographs now in the archives of the Museum of the City of New York. Endnotes aid the contemporary reader.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
Harvard University Press
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
33 halftones, 13 line illustrations, 2 tables
Dimensions
Height: 209 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
451 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-04932-1 (9780674049321)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2010
1st Edition
Harvard University Press
€71.99
Available for download
Persons
Sam Bass Warner, Jr., is Visiting Professor of Urban History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alan Trachtenberg is Neil Gray, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University.
Content
* List of Illustrations * Introduction by Alan Trachtenberg * Note on the Text * Chronology of Jacob A. Riis's Life How the Other Half Lives * Preface * Introduction * Genesis of the Tenement * The Awakening * The Mixed Crowd * The Downtown Back Alleys * The Italian in New York * The Bend * A Raid on the Stale-Beer Dives * The Cheap Lodging Houses * Chinatown * Jewtown * The Sweaters of Jewtown * The Bohemians--Tenement House Cigarmaking * The Color Line in New York * The Common Herd * The Problem of the Children * Waifs of the City's Slums * The Street Arab * The Reign of Rum * The Harvest of Tares * The Working Girls of New York * Pauperism in the Tenements