The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Thank goodness the NYT reviewed this; I snapped it up and have read it through twice, frequently laughing out loud and just as often gasping in shock. A human, funny, offensive, very lively and colorful tour of New York boarding houses, apartments, tenements in the mid-19th century (the author's adventures seem to have taken place in the 1840s and early '50s). I alternately fell in love with Gunn and wanted to sock him on the jaw. But you will never forget this book and will want to come back and dip into it often. The illustrations, too, are priceless. Bravo! to the publisher for reissuing this!

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses

The American boardinghouse once provided basic domestic shelter and constituted a uniquely modern world view for the first true generation of U.S. city-dwellers. Thomas Butler Gunn's classic 1857 account of urban habitation, The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses, explores the process by which boardinghouse life was translated into a lively urban vernacular. Intimate in its confessional tone, comprehensive in its detail, disarmingly penetrating despite (or perhaps because of) its self-deprecating wit, Physiology is at once an essential introduction to a "lost" world of boarding, even as it comprises an early, engaging, and sophisticated analysis of America's "urban turn" during the decades leading up to the Civil War.
In his introduction, David Faflik considers what made Gunn's book a compelling read in the past and how today it can elucidate our understanding of the formation and evolution of urban American life and letters.

Buy cheap The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses now.