Thankfully, New Yorkers is not War and Peace, with its several hundred characters. Taylor culled and cut a lot. But among those who made it into New Yorkers, some are unforgettable.

... a grand fugue for organ, with all the stops pulled out. It is a gift right now, when New York City is coming back from a pandemic winter that has been the ruin of many a favourite restaurant, bar and sandwich shop, and put the lives of anyone in the performing arts on pause indefinitely. Contrary to popular reports, New York is no ghost town. In New Yorkers the city is hopping, punching, reeling, dancing, thrumming, honking, thriving.

The world depicted here can be a harsh and bleak one, but not without humanity and wit, which Taylor captures superbly.

I’ve lived in Britain for more than 35 years and in London for a quarter century. But New York is my hometown.

... a teeming oral history.

Craig Taylor’s new chronicle of New York...crackle[s] with chatty charm and vitality. And maybe a pinch of nostalgia too.

One of Craig Taylor’s many skills as an interviewer lies in his eye for the vivid detail that captures a larger abstraction.

... ambitious and entertaining.

Taylor corrals under one roof so many of the remarkable characters who populate 'the city that never sleeps' that it amazes me anew. Somehow the author blends scores of marvellous human stories, told in each individual’s own words, into a kind of magnificent chorus of human striving, which sometimes swells to an absolute crescendo in New York. If you wish, it’s easy flip around to what most appeals. But there is a kind of hidden purity running throughout this book, partly owing to its methods.

Nearly all the isolated stories are interesting; there are only a few duds.

... intriguing.

[Taylor] finds remarkable storytellers among the city’s eight million residents, a diverse lot from the city’s five boroughs, each borough claiming its own uniqueness. In this oral history, Taylor stands back as his subjects speak for themselves.

... lively.

... engrossing, multihued.