The Heart of the World: 0000 (Vintage departures)

The history of Broadway has been written before but never better. . . . The verbal energy that pours off these pages is enough to transform the hell of...Times Square into a rough-hewn heaven neon lit and open all night. . . . The only thing wrong with this book is it isnt longer. —Newsweek. Nik Cohn ushers readers along the street he calls The Heart of the World. producing a book that is a resplendent pageant of New Yorks high—and low—life. Among the characters we meet are a golden-tongued cab driver who calls himself a collector of farces; a pickpocket with the terrifying gift of impersonating his marks; a heartbreakingly beautiful Dominican transvestite named Lush Life; strippers; pseudo-prophets; and a disgraced political veteran of the days when the graft was still honest. Conducted by a writer with the manic energy of a sideshow barker and the full-blooded lyricism of a raucous poet this is a bebop odyssey along the Great White Way that reaches in implication far beyond the streets of New York to document the ever-evolving mixtures that make up America itself.. A lovely bracing book full to bursting with juicy tasty rancid life. While making its bawdy way through crowded spaces . . . it also travels through modern times . . . wondrous. —USA TODAY