Radical Walking Tours of New York City

Radical Walking Tours of New York City, Bruce Kayton, Seven Stories Press, 1999

Did you know that among the former residents of New York City are Leon Trotsky and Fidel Castro? Neither did I, until I read this book.

Kayton has been leading walking tours of the city for the last ten years, looking at life from the point of view of those on the bottom of the ladder, those fighting for a better world. Covering the entire city, from Harlem to the Lower East Side to Battery Park to Wall Street, the twelve tours in this book show the rich radical history of the Big Apple.

Among the places visited in this book are: the site of Margaret Sanger's first birth control clinic, the house of Langston Hughes in Harlem, Ed Koch's rent controlled apartment, the site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 people, mostly immigrant Jewish women, the present home of the War Resister's League, the national headquarters of the Communist Party, the home of  Marcus Garvey, and the home of the Black Panthers. Among the Yippies who, in 1967, threw dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was Candice "Murphy Brown" Bergen.

This is a wonderful book. Not only is it an excellent history of radicalism in America, it also works as a history of New York City. For those who can't get to the city to go on one of these tours, this book is a very worthy alternative.<p>