Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough

by Ian Frazier

Overview

Ian Frazier’s magnum opus: a love song to New York City’s most heterogeneous and alive borough.

For the past fifteen years, Ian Frazier has been walking the Bronx. Paradise Bronx reveals the amazingly rich and tumultuous history of this amazingly various piece of our greatest city. From Jonas Bronck, who bought land from the local Native Americans, to the formerly gang-wracked South Bronx that gave birth to hip-hop, Frazier’s loving exploration is a moving tour de force about the polyglot culture that is America today.

During the Revolution, when the Bronx was unclaimed territory known as the Neutral Ground, some of the war’s decisive battles were fought here by George Washington’s troops. Gouverneur Morris, one of the most colorful Founding Fathers, owned a huge swath of the Bronx, where he lived when he was not in Paris during the French Revolution or helping write the US Constitution.

Frazier shows us how the coming of the railroads and the subways drove the settling of the Bronx by various waves of immigration— Irish, Italian, Jewish (think the Grand Concourse), African American, Caribbean, Puerto Rican (J.Lo is one of the borough’s most famous citizens). The romance of the Yankees, the disaster of the Cross Bronx Expressway, the invention of rap and hip-hop, the resurgence of community as the borough’s communities learn mutual aid—all are investigated, recounted, and celebrated in Frazier’s inimitable voice.

This is a book like no other about a quintessential American city and the resilience and beauty of its citizens.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374709648
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	08/20/2024
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	55,567
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Ian Frazier’s books, all published by FSG, include Great Plains, Travels in Siberia, Dating Your Mom, and many other classic works of nonfiction and humor. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
Ian Frazier is the author of Travels in Siberia, Great Plains, On the Rez, Lamentations of the Father and Coyote V. Acme, among other works, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He graduated from Harvard University. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

Frazier loves the idea of uncovering what people might not clearly see—might not even be looking for—and connecting it to the present day . . . Though it’s as fundamentally foolish as declaring a Great American Novelist, if forced to pick a Great American Nonfiction Writer, I might choose Ian Frazier, because his work has always resolutely quested to explore, experience, and explain his nation.” —Dan Kois, Slate

"Ancient Rome had its Livy, and now the Bronx has its epic chronicler in Ian Frazier . . . a compelling chronicle of the Bronx, all the more effective for its clear-eyed take on a subject so often drenched in sentimentality or distaste." —Edward Kosner, The Wall Street Journal

“A profound portrait of this storied place . . . Vivid profiles of historical figures . . . The culmination of many years of passionate inquiry, Frazier's deep history—grandly detailed, vibrant, and caring—does right by the resilient, ever-morphing Bronx.” —Booklist (starred review)

“[An] appreciation of a unique area that will appeal to those who have had enough tales of Manhattan.” — Kirkus Reviews

"Having grown up in the Bronx, and having always thought of the borough as a series of interchangeable immigrant neighborhoods, this book comes as a marvelously encyclopedic surprise, full of historical dazzle and cultural richness. An absolute pleasure to read!" —Vivian Gornick, author of Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader

"Once known as the Jewish Borough, the Bronx is the real New York. Resilient, diverse, tolerant, brash, ethnic, competitive, and ambitious, it seemed to have everything, not just the Yankees and the Bronx Zoo, but Parkchester, City Island, the real Little Italy, Orchard Beach, Loehmann's, the Loews Paradise, Krum's and Jahn's ice cream parlors, and the largest produce market in the western hemisphere. Readers may not agree with all of Ian Frazier's many judgments, but they will enjoy the tales and the anecdotes. If you ever lived in the Bronx, you can't miss this entertaining and informative book which brings us up to the present." —Kenneth T. Jackson, editor-in-chief, The Encyclopedia of New York City, and president emeritus of the New-York Historical Society.

From the Publisher

2024-05-24
A thorough examination of the history of the Bronx from colonial times up to the present.

Readers expecting a comic tone fromNew Yorker writer Frazier, author ofGone to New York,Travels in Siberia, and other acclaimed books, won't find it here. It's not entirely clear why he devotes a massive volume to the Bronx, aside from the fact that the author, who lives in a New Jersey suburb of New York, decided at some point about 15 years ago that he would walk a cumulative 1,000 miles in the borough. Frazier chronicles his deliberate pacing through the years, documenting what is known about the Native Americans who moved through the area before the Dutch settlers arrived, reflecting on the enslaved people who lived there in colonial times, and analyzing the impact of Revolutionary War battles on the area. Tangents abound: Frazier spends many pages, for example, on the life, travels to France, and mistresses of politician and occasional Bronx resident Gouverneur Morris, who was at least in part responsible for the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and who gave his name to the Bronx’s Morrisania neighborhood. Using mainly secondary sources, the author traces a narrative arc that leads up to the “paradise” era in the 1930s and ’40s, when children of Jewish immigrants played stickball in the streets; down to the lows of the 1970s, when fires seemed to sweep continually through the neighborhoods; through the rise of hip-hop and on to today, including the effects of gentrification. As he approaches the present, Frazier further inserts himself into the story, adding anecdotes about people he met on his walks or summarizing interviews with those who have had an impact on the community.

A dense appreciation of a unique area that will appeal to those who have had enough tales of Manhattan.

Kirkus Reviews