This is an interesting and very in-depth book that's about revolting in New York; gotta love the title pun.

From lynchings to solving the public-transport problem (in the nineteenth century), this book delves into statistics, racism, individual stories, and more high-and-lows, which is quite the read for anybody who's into details on New York.

Overall like the book very much, but the individual chapters didn't connect to one another as much as I would like. A longer expository thesis of the work would help.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Occupy Wall Street did not come from nowhere. It was part of a long history of riot, revolt, uprising, and sometimes even revolution that has shaped New York City. From the earliest European colonization to the present, New Yorkers have been revolting. Hard hitting, revealing, and insightful, Revolting New York tells the story of New York’s evolution through revolution, a story of near-continuous popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) uprising.
Richly illustrated with more than ninety historical and contemporary images, historical maps, and maps drawn especially for the book, Revolting New York provides the first comprehensive account of the historical geography of revolt in New York, from the earliest uprisings of the Munsee against the Dutch occupation of Manhattan in the seventeenth century to the Black Lives Matter movement and the unrest of the Trump era. Through this rich narrative, editors Neil Smith and Don Mitchell reveal a continuous, if varied and punctuated, history of rebellion in New York that is as vital as the more standard histories of formal politics, planning, economic growth, and restructuring that largely define our consciousness of New York’s story.

In recent years, revolution in New York has been typified by the Occupy Wall Street movement. But the history of resistance in New York goes back much, much further than that...

Dating back to slave riots, this book covers a huge range of movements that have made an impact in the city: race riots, anti-war demonstrations, women's rights, civil rights, sit-ins and strikes on university campuses and workplaces - all the way to the financial and immigration protests we see today.

But this is more than just a chronicle of protests and unrest - it captures the social history of a city that spans 400 years. The contributing authors do a marvellous job bringing the reader into the city, examining the issues (and the history behind it) and manage to both analyse and criticise these movements, as necessary.

While a lot of these history books can ending up reading like a textbook, this one doesn't suffer from that at all. Quite possibly due to the different styles of writing and approaches to each event. Everything feels fresh as you read, and at no time did I feel bored with the narratives.

Would I recommend this book? Absolutely. Without hesitation.


Paul
ARH

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You can't write history without an opinion, without grounding in how life is lived and without an understanding that takes in the granular details of life as well as an over arching perspective that unites disparate facts. Neil Smith and Don Mitchell in Revolting New York give a history of a city that revolts, riots and rebels as it develops, and consumes influences and peoples that interact with the city.

Its a very broad work that touches on the successive waves of New York's development from the Dutch colony and its interactions with First Nations up to more recent movements that have challenged the international power which New York has become the center of.

The interesting characters, the controversies, the tragedies, the progress and the beauty of New York are all played out in this work. The authors are not neutral in their descriptions and this is a good thing. With history the subject is not inanimate elements who do not make decisions. People acted to change New York, either good in the case of who would challenge the inequalities and invidious and arrogant use of power or bad in the case of racist violence that has divided the peoples of New York.

You can not read this book without feeling engaged with a vibrant and often troubled city that is New York.