The City Beneath Us: Building the New York Subway

Gift

The City Beneath Us is a superb collection of photos weighed down by a less-than-stellar text. The text reads like it was assembled by a committee, with each committee member writing a chapter. A more thorough editing could have smoothed the transitions and given the book a more unified feel. Though, the contributing writers are unified in one thing -- they are sure of who the New York subway's enemies were throughout the years. This strident finger-pointing also detracts. But then there are the pictures. Nearly all is forgiven in the face of these wonderful images. If you get geeked by trains or things underground, this is a great, if flawed, book.

While I am not a New York resident, I have family there and visit often. I have routinely been amazed by the subway system that we ride while visiting so my family purchased this as a birthday gift. I found the narrative and pictures absolutely fascinating and believe it is a book that I will routinely reference and review rather than a one-time-read!

As someone who worked on the Subway I really enjoyed the book and couldnot put it down until i finished it. I worked all over on the system and, under therivers and, it's great to know what went into building this amazingtransportation system. I recommened it's reading to anyone who has everrode the NYC Subway.

A very well researched & written account of the construction of the NY subway

niceread

I bought this as a present for my brother who is in charge of a main subway line in a big city. He totally loved it.

Beautiful book about the amazing process of building the NYC subway system. Absolutely incredible.

This book comes in two sections: the first describes the history of the subway's construction, concentrating on the key events and personalities, and also the financial and political problems encountered; the second section is largely a series of photographs showing many facets of the construction process.I found the first section frustrating because it is written in rather a disjointed fashion, jumping backwards and forwards in time, and also hopping around between subjects. I struggled to understand the development of the system in geographical terms as no maps are provided - presumeably the author believes that all readers will be familiar with the geography of New York. The author also assumes that the reader will be familiar with the political scene in early 20th Century New York, as there are many references to Tammany Hall, union bosses, and the corruption then rife. This first section would benefit greatly from some effort to structure it better in terms of geographical, historical and cultural context.The second section has virtually no narrative, relying instead on captions to each photograph. The photographs themselves are superb, beautifully printed at a good size, and as well as detailing construction the New York street scenes they show a wealth of fascinating period detail. However this section again suffers from a lack of structure, as there is nothing to locate the photographs either in time or place - or indeed to place them chronologically in any form of construction sequence.Finally, I found the book disappointingly light on the issues of engineering construction. Yes they are described briefly, and reference is made to shoring and tunnelling techniques, underwater construction and compressed air working; but for a book with "building" in its title the descriptions are brief and give no insight into why or how these techniques were used. And there is nothing, other than a few photographs, to describe the rolling stock.In short the book has a very "unedited" and lightweight feel about it which, sadly, relegates it to coffee table status. It's worth buying for the photographs alone (although it is sad that none of the more recent ones are in colour), however you will not be very much better informed when you have read it which - given the potential of the subject and the wealth of information available - is disappointing.