Book Review: A Painstakingly Detailed History Of NYC

His latest volume, New York 2000, is the fifth of a series of books on the history of New York City's development, architecture and planning. The first volume of Stern's series on New York was released in 1983. The series covers the city's development from the late 1800s to the present day, filling more than 5,000 pages.

"In their concentration of less 'iconic' buildings, these five volumes represent more than an education: They represent a revolution in the way readers perceive and even inhabit a city. Each artifact of the urban landscape, from the humblest row house to the tallest skyscraper, from the design of streetlamps to the width of road-beds, seems to have been zapped with the lifeforce of intentionality. In a city, everything, for better or worse, is there for a reason. Everything represents a conscious and deliberate decision and coalesces, with 20 million other details, into a unified and legible, if not entirely systematic, totality. That is the unspoken 'idée mere' that is enshrined in this latest volume, as well as in its four predecessors."