Scenes from the Life of a City

Glittering and glamorous, New York in the mid-nineteenth century was also plagued by political corruption, sanitation problems, and a growing gulf between rich and poor. In this book, Eric Homberger brilliantly evokes the life of a city through vivid portraits of New Yorkers struggling to reconstruct a sense of community amid the selfish materialism of their urban environment. Homberger focuses on four main characters who played important roles in various reform efforts of the period: Ann Lohman, known as "Madame Restell, the world-renowned medical expert," whose services as an abortionist were partly responsible for the creation of a harshly repressive public policy toward abortion that persisted for more than a century; "Slippery Dick" Connolly, comptroller of New York City, who escaped to Europe with millions of the city's dollars and betrayed his confederates in the Tweed Ring; Dr.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.