Mike Wallace

• Published in: Bomb (New York, N.Y.) no. 141; pp. 104 - 109
• Main Authors: Wallace, Mike, Lopate, Phillip
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York NEW ART PUBLICATIONS, INC 01-10-2017; New Art Publications
• Subjects: American history; Cities; College professors; Illustrations; Scholars; Wallace, Mike (historian)
• ISSN: 0743-3204; 2328-2894

It would seem hard to top Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace’s authoritative history of New York from its colonial beginnings until 1898, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and received universally positive reviews, but Wallace, this time writing solo, has done it with volume two, Greater Gotham. Covering the period from 1898 to 1919, this thousand-plus-page tome from Oxford University Press, with copious illustrations, is both magisterial and warmly accessible. Wallace, who has been working on the project since the 1980s and is now seventy-five, has more or less cheerfully accepted the task of spending the rest of his days completing and revising this vast canvas up to the present day. Nothing like this urban record has ever been attempted. An interview with Mike Wallace, Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the founder of the Gotham Center for New York City History, is presented. Among other things, Wallace talks about his book, Greater Gotham.