New York Sketches

“Jewels of observation . . . A world described in such loving detail overflows with wonders: The rigorous attention in Sketches is a kind of re-enchantment.” —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

For more than fifty years at The New Yorker, E. B. White came to define the ideal American prose: clear, casual, democratic, and urbane. While his classic Here Is New York captured a specific moment in the life of Manhattan, New York Sketches, the first collection of his casual pieces about the city, offers a more intimate and playful look at the city’s everyday enchantments.

Here White ranges at whim from the nesting habits of pigeons to the behavior of snails in aquariums, from the ghosts of old romance that haunt a fire escape or flower shop to the bustle of a calculator trade show on Eighth Avenue. These sketches, some less than a page long, many written for a laugh or in response to the news of the day, show us White at his most sprightly and inventive.

Newly presented in a beautiful, pocket-sized hardcover gift edition, New York Sketches is a diversion for every New Yorker—native, adoptive, aspiring, or far from home—and a perfect introduction to what White called “the inscrutable and lovely town.”