"One could scarcely find a more informative and engaging guide than this book, distilled from the award-winning
tours developed over the last decade by Big Onion Walking Tours...It is a delight, deeply knowledgeable, presented
with wit and style. Would that more historians engage the public so well."
--New York History, Spring 2002
Publisher Web Site, January, 2004
Summary
Whether you're a tourist or a native New Yorker, you will appreciate this witty, informative walking guide to
New York City, as authors Seth Kamil and Eric Wakin peel back the layers of New York's most popular neighborhoods.
Here in one volume are their award-winning tours. In their "Immigrant New York" tour you can take a walk
on the Bowery, the most infamous street in the city and learn how the city's finest roadway became America's "Skid
Row." In "Before Stonewall" you'll discover the many facets of gay and lesbian history and trace
the development of Greenwich Village as a cultural mecca. From SoHo to the Upper West Side; from Harlem to Brooklyn
there's something in The Big Onion Guide for everyone.
The authors show how it was nothing new when Mayor Giuliani was unable to ban sales by immigrant mobile food vendors.
The Guide takes us to the place where the Dutch tried to ban street side sales by Scottish peddlers 350 years ago,
and where the great Fiorello La Guardia banned most of the pushcart salesmen at midcentury.
But Kamil and Wakin are not nostalgists or preservationists. Instead, their historical tours connect today's city
with the snapshots of yesterday, blending social and cultural history with the evolution of different ethnic and
cultural communities.
The Big Onion Guide includes ten walking tours, plus a 5-borough driving tour, peppered with informative sidebars,
illustrations, and photos from the collection at the New-York Historical Society.