Radical Walking Tours of New York City

By Bruce Kayton

Traditional walking tours of New York enshrine the wealthy and the war heroes. Rarely seen are those buried in their wake - those who fought the power, pushing for a better world. In this exciting new guide, Bruce Kayton leads us to differnt kinds of monuments, offering readers a history of class struggles, labour movements and civil rights battles, with such sites as Emma Goldman's home in the East Village, Langston Hughes's house in Harlem and the site of Margaret Sanger's first birth control clinic. A new perspective on the history of New York and American radicalism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583225544
• ISBN13: 9781583225547
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

you don't have to be a radical to enjoy this book

This is a guidebook with a hard left political point of view on absolutely everything (as in communist or anarchist, not liberal). Not to be alarmed, however. My evaluation of the book is especially for those, like me, who do NOT share these views. Rather than off-putting, I found Kayton's historical comments to be concise, virtually always intersting, and highly relevant to an appreciation of the neighborhoods in question. The Greenwhich Village walk, for ecample, focuses on sites that have been the homes of famous leftists (John Reed, Emma Goldman, the Rosenbergs), left-leaning writers (Edna St. Vincent Millay), alleged bad guy capitalists (Mayor Jimmy Walker, Mayor Ed Koch), as well as important places in the history of labor (the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), abolitionism, civil rights, gay rights (the Stonewall Inn demonstrations), and anti-war protest. The slice of New York history that these places represent comes alive from a perspective that resembles the participants'. Finally, Kayton's humor and energy more than outweigh the silliness of some of his views. I recommend it if you're looking for something different.

Fascinating As Browsing History or NY Introduction

I've tried several of Bruce's actual Radical Walking Tours, which he still conducts in person. He researches, writes and organizes his work better, or more consistently, than he sometimes delivers it in person. But they are always stimulating as social history, leftist political history, labor and industrial history, and even humor. Easily among the best tours I've tried here in NYC and I've tried several. Many "stops" in his tours have changed my very sense of certain NYC blocks & neighborhoods.This book is also fascinating browsing history as well as one of the coolest specialty travel guides I've looked over. Good for new and veteran New Yorkers alike.