Eat the City

Robin Shulman's Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Bee Keepers, Wine Makers, and Brewers Who Built New York juxtaposes stories about contemporary people doing such things with their counterparts in the past. It's full of interesting facts, such as:

•  NYC boasts 250 types of bees
• Brooklyn and Queens produced more vegetables than any other county in the United States into the 1880s
• Captain Kidd lived at what is today 7 Hanover Square

It revises a commonly held narrative about New York, and cities in general, showing that cities are in fact places where things grow, things that nourish us, things that feed us, things that sate us to our very soul.

Photo: thanks