| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Thomas Bender. The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea. New York: New Press. 2002. Pp. xvi, 287. $30.00.

"The metropolitan idea," as Thomas Bender views it, is challenging, subtle, malleable, diffuse. What, he asks in this flowing, conversational collection of fourteen revised essays, "is the character of metropolitan culture in this city, and how has it changed over two hundred years?" (p. vii). The term "metropolitan," he points out, can imply setting a definitive national standard. Yet New York "resist[s] ... metropolitan completion"; it "will not be Paris" (p. xi). He sees it as one of New York's characteristics to change, yet a changing city cannot easily define a standard. Bender's book uses these big questions about New York to provide a distinctive perspective on some of the city's notable places, and on some of its most notable artists and writers.

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