The history of New York has become, in the last decade or so, an academic cottage industry. It has also become a popular phenomenon. As Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (not the Mike Wallace of Sixty Minutes, I hasten to add) note in their mammoth new book, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898,
One of our ongoing avenues of inquiry follows New Yorkers as they slowly developed the conviction that their past was worth knowing, even worth preserving. Indeed, we believe there is a greater degree of interest in Gotham’s history today than was ever the case before. We hope to nourish this ripening historical sensibility by telling the city’s story in a spirited way—a relatively easy task given that it’s intrinsically dazzling, a claim we think transcends both the fond boasting of all historians for their subject and the legendary conceitedness of New Yorkers (we notorious braggarts).
It is therefore surprising that many years have passed since there has been a proper narrative history of New York City.
William Smith’s History of the Province of New York, published in London in 1757, is generally regarded as the first such attempt. (A revised edition came out in 1792 from Matthew Carey of Philadelphia, the young republic’s leading publishing house.) A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynastyby Washington Irving was published in 1809. It was a tongue-in-cheek mock-epic