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Metropolitan Diary
"That's so New York" can be praise or an insult, depending how it's said, but Sam Roberts' citified voice is true-blue in his new book, "A History of New York in 101 Objects."
He would know. The Brooklyn-born Roberts has been anchored at The New York Times for 31 years, currently as urban affairs correspondent. Prior to that, he worked for 15 years at the New York Daily News, and has lived in three of the city's five boroughs. Save for his college years at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., his work has kept him within the city limits.Sam RobertsNew York City subway tokens.
All that know-how has been poured into his new book, which also has a companion exhibition at the New York Historical Society. Roberts hopes the combination will leave people with "a new appreciation of history and what New York City is all about, and that they will look at history and that kind of historical perspective in new ways."
The writer said the book's premise actually stemmed from his last one about Grand Central Terminal. After leaving his publisher's office with the agreed-upon subtitle of...