Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York

Justin Davidson is the architecture and classical music critic at New York magazine, where he writes about a broad range of urban, civic, and design issues. He grew up in Rome, graduated from Harvard, and later earned a doctoral degree in music composition at Columbia University. As a classical music and cultural critic at Newsday, he won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2002. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

From New York magazine s architecture critic, a walking and reading guide to New York City a historical, cultural, architectural, and personal approach to seven neighborhoods throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, including six essays that help us understand the evolution of the city

For nearly a decade, Pulitzer Prize winning critic Justin Davidson has explained the ever-changing city of New York to his readers at New York magazine, introducing new buildings, interviewing architects, tracking the way the transforming urban landscape shapes who New Yorkers are. Now, his extensive, inspiring knowledge will be available to a wide audience. An insider s guide to the architecture and planning of New York that includes maps, photographs, and original insights from the men and women who built the city and lived in it its designers, visionaries, artists, writers Magnetic City offers first-time visitors and lifelong residents a new way to see New York.

Includes walking tours throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx
the Financial District
the World Trade Center 
the Seaport and the Brooklyn waterfront
 Chelsea and the High Line
 42nd Street
the Upper West Side
the South Bronx and Sugar Hill

Praise for Magnetic City

An intimate, seductive guidebook. The New York Times

An enthralling new book makes clear that I m not alone in my home-town infatuation . . . lends nuance, texture and historical perspective to my impression that New York City has never been so appealing or life-affirming as it is today. New York Post

[Davidson] combines a keen intelligence, experience, observational skills, expertise (especially but not solely architectural), and an elegant writing style to make this beautifully produced book indispensable. Booklist (starred review)

A street-level celebration of New York City in all its perpetual complexity and contradiction . . . a worthy companion to Alfred Kazin s A Walker in the City and the American Institute of Architects guides to the architecture of New York as well as a treat for fans of the metropolis. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Justin Davidson does more than direct our feet to New York s hidden monuments. He explains the structure of the city with a clarity that would be bracing even for a Gotham habitué, but more than that, he finds the meaning in every building and byway. Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree

Mr. Davidson s exceptional knowledge of our beloved city is inspiring. Magnetic City is now my official chaperone. Patti LuPone

Justin Davidson has a mind alive to every signal, and his brilliant prose style transmits that electricity in black-and-white type. He is thus born to the task of capturing the chaotic splendor of New York City on the page. Alex Ross, author of Listen to This

Justin Davidson s beautiful tours of New York City invoke and redouble our love of the metropolis. Jerry Saltz, senior art critic, New York

From the architecture critic for New York magazine, a guide to New York City--on foot, by bike, by ferry, and in the mind. This is at once a historical, cultural, architectural, literary, and deeply personal account of the city, told in seven tours (including Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx) and six essays.