It has become a habit for me to bring a history book or a historical novel when I travel on vacation. So when I celebrated my wedding anniversary in New York, I Kindle’d up, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City. The history / walking tour book of Manhattan is by Michelle and James Nevius.
The book covers a lot of historical ground. Literally. You go from street to street and building to building through the Isle of Manhattan learning about Peter Stuyvesant, Alexander Hamilton and even a bit on Lady Liberty.
The book comes in bite sized chapters that focus in on an area and an era. So you can easily and quickly read a chapter on the subway while heading towards it. Or read it as you are walking through Central Park, like we did. Learning that they had to kick my wife’s kind (the Irish) out of what would become the most iconic park in the country.
The other part of the book are turn by turn tours of areas covered in the history section of the book.
The writing is crisp and clear and imparts loads of knowledge. Did you know the term “The Great White Way” was coined after a snowstorm and only took on more meaning later.
To read this book whilst in Los Angeles, I would first suggest decamping to one of the new Shake Shacks in town and ordering up a burger and a Brooklyn Brewery beer.
Then mix-six some SixPoint Ales and look at the clever Statue hidden in the grocery scan.
As a nod to the nickname, I might also find a hard cider, maybe something from Reverend Nat’s like his Winter Abbey Cider.
