City of Dreams

For nearly four centuries New York has been America's main port of entry, taking in more immigrants than all other entry points together, and Tyler Anbinder's history follows the newcomers who passed through it. The city today has more than three million residents born abroad. Anbinder tells the story through individual lives: a Caribbean-born young man who later became a Founding Father, Angelo Siciliano of Calabria, who reinvented himself as the bodybuilder Charles Atlas, and the Dominican-born designer Oscar de la Renta. Revolutionaries and rioters appear beside innovators and artists, alongside deep deprivation and great success, and the book recreates how the city looked, sounded and smelled as it grew.

Morgan Housel highlights how many of America's immigrants arrived in a single city, New York, during the short span from 1880 to 1920.