City Notebook: A Reporter's Portrait of a Vanishing New York

McCandlish Phillips, whose by-line has been familiar to readers of The New York Times since 1955, has looked into just about every corner of the city and has written about nearly every aspect of its life.

New York is not the same city today as it was yesterday. You cannot set foot in the same New York twice. Yet you can capture its momentary essence in City Notebook. One of the best metropolitan reporters of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s has brought together his best pieces on the City’s life. You will learn, for example, about the “rainbow rain” that sometimes falls on the City, about the Great Bee Roundup, the Case of the Garrulous Parrot, the Small World of Melvin Krulewitch, and the fate of the Gowanus Canal. The reality of New York is made up of millions of such instances, a mosaic of people, places, and things. The ones in this book have been chosen because they are compulsively fascinating, utterly irreplaceable, or just very funny. Gay Talese has called McCandlish Phillips “one of the best reporters” on The Times. People who know his byline relish his crisp style and dry wit.