I'm starting this topic with two recent books that I have added to my collection.

Seeing Central Park - is a guide book written by Sara Cedar Miller, the Park's official historian and photographer. It is a guide that can double as a small coffee table book - the photos are marvelous. It is smaller and cheaper than her excellent coffee table book - Central Park: An American Masterpiece. Either can be bought at the Dairy or from the Central Park Site - www.centralparknyc.org (where proceeds WIILL go to the Central Park Conservancy.

Inside the Apple - by the Neviuses (he's a historian = she's an archaeologist, I think. They are both tour guides. They have organized this guide brilliantly. It focuses on 185 places mostly in Manhattan and the writeups are organized historically. Later writeups are often in similar places to the earlier ones and when they are they are cross referenced. Finally, in the back, the writeups are cross referenced into really nice self guided walking tours. This will make more sense when you actually read the book but it is VERY well done!

I'll be back with more -- please add to the list and if someone starts a NYC Fiction list, I'll be adding to that one as well.

The AIA guide is a a hefty tome but it is invaluable to all those interested in NYC architecture. It contains insightful and pithy comments. You could xerox the relevant pages, instead of carrying the entire book with you.

If you want to begin at the beginning

The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto

is great

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/island/

This is a great list!

Thanks, all!

Am bookmarking it!

The chunky AIA guide, updated every decade or so, serves cumulatively as a history of NYC architecture and public and professional perceptions as well as a guide. The edition currently in preparation promises some major changes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/ny...ty/19norv.html

Buy the current (2000) edition and the new one too next year.

I have this book on my bedside table and love comparing and contrasting the descriptions of neighborhoods, streets to my present day experiences:
The WPA Guide to New York City: The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s New York

Another good heavy book book for late night reading--Writing New York, a collection of essays (and some poems) about New York by mostly well known writers. In one essay, William Carlos Williams describes his experience being a doctor at a hospital in Hell's Kitchen. Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", a favorite poem of mine, is also in there:
http://www.bartleby.com/142/86.html

Unearthing Gotham, by Cantwell and Wall, is an excellent account of urban archaeology in New York City.

Five Points by Anbinder is tells the fascinating story of the notorious New York slum (the locale of Gangs of New York).

I have on order a new book which was well reviewed in the NYT Sunday Book Review a couple of weeks back, Mannahatta, A Natural History of New York.

Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels by Jill Jonnes

One in the "sort of" category.

Devil in the White City is a NON fiction (all quotes have footnotes) novel about the 1893 EXPO in Chicago and a serial killer that was operating in Chicago at the same time. Why is this on an NYC list (I heard someone cry)? Because many of the major players at the EXPO were New Yorkers (the author has Olmsted down to a T) and the EXPO influenced NYC architecture for decades to come. AND the chapters are SHORT - It is a great subway read.

I really enjoyed that book and I actually thought of it when I first read the OP--funny, huh?

"Manhattan When I Was Young" by Mary Cantwell, a memoir.

The author came to NYC fresh from college post WWII and her childhood in Bristol RI. She worked for Mademoiselle magazine and married (unhappily), and had two daughters. Eventually, she was an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and was on their editorial board. Exquisite writing, albeit a somewhat depressing story. I also loved her childhood memoir, "American Girl."

Another sort of...Red Leather Diary -- by Lily Koppel -- The author is given (part of the true story) a 5 year diary that was filled in every day from 1929 to 1933 by a young New York woman.

The author with some help - finds the woman - then 90 and the resulting book is diary exerpts, remembrances and writing about the period.

The author, who is a Columbia School of Journalism graduate and NY Times writer, in one case could have used a fact checker for her own writing but all in all it's a fun read.