| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

David M. Henkin. City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York. (Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives.) New York: Columbia University Press. 1998. Pp. xv, 242. Cloth $45.00, paper $16.50.

The history of books and reading in nineteenth-century America has gradually expanded beyond the study of novels to encompass illustrated magazines, sensational pamphlets, trade cards, and various ephemera. David M. Henkin's book offers a thoughtful new chapter in this growing field by focusing on the city of New York and exploring writing and print that were in public view of all passersby, whether New York residents or visitors. His imaginative search for significant urban texts traces signs in unforeseen sites, from the streets to the buildings of the new metropolis. As he states, "New York was becoming a city plastered with written words" (p. 99). His description of the ubiquitous words that multiplied in number and increased in size during the antebellum period is full of insightful details and vivid anecdotes taken from European travel writers and American novelists, as well as periodicals and urban photographs. Most of the evidence, however, is drawn from the late antebellum period: that is, the 1850s and the early 1860s. . . .

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