Summer Reading #2: Joseph Berger, THE WORLD IN A CITY

When I got this book as a gift last year I expected a light cultural romp among different neighborhoods of New York City -- but I also got an intelligent examination about the modern immigrant experience. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Times writer Joseph Berger approaches his series of essays about different neighborhoods as traveler and sociologist, and manages to have it both ways.

Berger's thesis, threaded through his accounts of interviews and travels in different New York neighborhoods, is that since the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 -- which abolished the system of national quotas -- American immigration has changed in ways that have eradicated the older patterns in which new Americans settled. (It's pretty disturbing to think that 50 years ago the huddled masses yearning to break free were still controlled according to some ethnic balance sheet.) In New York City in particular, areas largely known for having one particular ethnic character have grown and shifted to accommodate new groups, from Italian barbers of East Harlem cutting the hair of new Hispanic immigrants to Afghans living alongside more established Indian communities in Flushing. Newer immigrants can video chat with their families in South America or watch the Pakistani national cricket team's test matches on satellite, but still face the challenges of maintaining cultural identity while adapting to new living arrangements here.

Berger's position in this is not at all objective, to be clear; the child of Russian Jews displaced by the Holocaust, he emigrated to New York as a young child and lived in the Grand Concourse neighborhood, once known as a lower-middle-class Jewish enclave, and where he reports for the book on Ghanaian immigrant communities saving up for property not in their adopted homeland, but in their ancestral villages to which they hope to retire someday. His extensive reporting acknowledges that even in a melting pot there are insoluble bits, whether among new arrivals (like the tension among Bukharan Jewish families when the women become the primary breadwinners) or between established and newer communities (like complaints against Korean shopkeepers in Douglaston who post signs in Korean without translation), but sees the melting taking place and enriching the city -- not exactly a revolutionary position but one with which I think many New Yorkers would agree if questioned.

THE WORLD IN A CITY is by definition insider-y, and I don't know how much people who aren't interested in the specifics of different neighborhoods of New York (for example, the difference between Jackson Heights and Rego Park) would enjoy that territorial aspect. But it works as an off-the-beaten-path sightseeing guide as well; the suggested sites at the end of every chapter are occasionally obvious, but emphasize local restaurants and places of worship, which at least would give you a place to kick off your adventures in outer Brooklyn or the south Bronx.