There is so much written about the city that naming every book is impossible. This is the list of my favorite books about New York.

Books about New York History

• Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (The History of NYC Series), Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace
• The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto
• Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, Michelle Nevius, James Nevius
• Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers, James Nevius, Michelle Nevius
• Chronicles of Old New York, James Roman
• The Bowery Boys: Adventures in Old New York: An Unconventional Exploration of Manhattan’s Historic Neighborhoods, Secret Spots and Colorful Characters, Greg Young, Tom Meyers
• New York: A Brief History, Charles River Editors
• Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America, Donald L. Miller
• Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles, Fran Leadon
• Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood, Tyler Anbinder
• Up in the Old Hotel: Reportage from “the New Yorker”, Joseph Mitchell, David Remnick
• Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York, Richard Zacks
• The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village, John Strausbaugh
• A Walking Tour of New York City – Greenwich Village, Doug Gelbert
• Spooky New York: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore, S. E. Schlosser
• Ghosts of New York City: The Most Haunted Locations, Jeffrey Fisher
• Blizzard!! The Great White Hurricane, Timothy Minnich, Siri Shaw
• The Blizzard of 88, Mary Cable
• Discovering Vintage New York: A Guide to the City’s Timeless Shops, Bars, Delis & More, Mitch Broder
• Smugglers, Bootleggers, and Scofflaws: Prohibition and New York City, Ellen NicKenzie Lawson

Books about New York’s Famous Buildings and Places

• The Flatiron: The New York Landmark and the Incomparable City That Arose with It, Alice Sparberg Alexiou
• 740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building, Michael Gross
• The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel, Julie Satow
• Life at the Dakota: New York’s Most Unusual Address, Stephen Birmingham
• Storied Bars of New York: Where Literary Luminaries Go to Drink, Delia Cabe
• The Bowery: A History of Grit, Graft and Grandeur, Eric Ferrara
• Madison Square Garden: The History of New York City’s Most Famous Arena, Charles River Editors
• Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with Artists and Outlaws in New York’s Rebel Mecca, Ed Hamilton
• Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build The Statue of Liberty, Elizabeth Mitchell
• America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops, Christine Sismondo

Books about Gilded Age in New York

• The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910, Esther Crain
• The Gilded Age: 1876–1912: Overture to the American Century, Alan Axelrod
• The Gilded Age, Milton Rugoff
• Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners, Therese Oneill
• The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy, Anne De Courcy
• To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery in the Gilded Age, Gail MacColl, Carol McD. Wallace
• A Season of Splendor: The Court of Mrs. Astor in Gilded Age New York, Greg King
• When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age, Justin Kaplan
• What Would Mrs. Astor Do?: The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age, Cecelia Tichi
• Top Drawer: American High Society from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, Mary Cable
• The Million Dollar Duchesses: How America’s Heiresses Seduced the Aristocracy, Julie Ferry
• A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in Gilded Age New York, Bill Greer
• City of Promise: A Novel of New York’s Gilded Age, Beverly Swerling
• Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic’s First-Class Passengers and Their World, Hugh Brewster

Historical Fiction

• New York, Edward Rutherfurd
• 1876, Gore Vidal
• The Alienist, Caleb Carr
• Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote
• The Witches of New York, Ami McKay
• New York 1609: A Historical Novel, Harald Johnson
• The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton, Marion Mainwaring
• The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
• The Swans of Fifth Avenue: A Novel, Melanie Benjamin
• Downtown: My Manhattan, Pete Hamill
• Forever, Pete Hamill
• North River, Pete Hamill

Books About New York’s Personalities and Biographies

• American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, Michael W. Kauffman
• Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
• Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America’s First Sensational Murder Mystery, Paul Collins
• Edgar A. Poe: A Biography, Daniel Dyer
• Lafayette, Martha Foote Crow
• P.T. Barnum: Greatest Showman on Earth, Daniel Alef
• Vanderbilt: Life Changing Lessons! Cornelius Vanderbilt On Money, Success & Life, William Wyatt
• Fortune’s Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt, Arthur T. Vanderbilt
• Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter in the ‘Gilded Age’ , Amanda Mackenzie Stuart
• Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women’s Rights, Sylvia D. Hoffert
• The Vanderbilt Women, Clarice Stasz
• The Astors, Virginia Cowles
• The Astors: The History and Legacy of One of the World’s Wealthiest Families, Charles River Editors
• Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival, Peter Stark
• The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in Twentieth-Century America, Robert F. Dalzell, Lee Baldwin Dalzell
• BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York, Kenneth D. Ackerman
• Doomed by Cartoon: How Cartoonist Thomas Nast and The New York Times Brought down Boss Tweed and His Ring of Thieves, John Adler, Draper Hill
• The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy, Charles R. Morris
• Money, Power and Violence: The Story of Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Andrew Williams
• Mobster Biography; Meyer Lansky, Stefanina Hill
• Capote: A Biography, Gerald Clarke
• The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars, Paul Collins
• The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel, James Bone
• The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, Simon Baatz
• Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball, Deborah Davis