Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough

Having lived in the Bronx near Westchester Square as a child, having stood on safety patrol across from PS 12 on Tratman Avenue, and having loved the murals on the walls of a bank across the street from the little park on the square, and having gone to movies at the Square Theater in the 1950s, I read this book with absorbing interest. Infinitely engaging and thoroughly enlightening, and as amazing in itself as the completely amazing hikes the author seems to have taken across every inch of the burrough. Now I want to read Frazier's book on the Great Plains, where I lived in my teens and early twenties and was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the Nebraska Sandhills. If that book, which has been around for years, is half as good as Paradise Bronx, it will be excellent

Loved reading things I didn't know, lots of history, politics and more even though I grew up there. I had some warm fuzzies when the author described places that were my old stomping grounds!!!

This book spans from the Dutch settling NYC to COVID. Who knew much of the Revolution was set in the Bronx? Ian Frazier, that's who. This book is for history buffs as well as anyone who is from the Boogie Down.

Literary and intimate as pre-academically driven history was written with the bonus of notes not typically found back then. You’re McEwan’s armchair companion in this gracious and generous travelogue through the history of The Bronx. With writing as fluid as the Bronx River, Frazier’s walk through The Bronx is sprinkled with insight and humor. I was born and bred in the Bronx like Ewan. And love that he brings love and passion to this misunderstood and maligned borough. He made me appreciate where I came from.

I was desiring a book which would resemble a historical tour of the entire borough. There were too many long-winded antidotes about people who lived or still live in the Bronx. Too much written about the hip-hop scene especially. So while his tour covered in the lower Bronx sufficiently, many neighborhoods were not covered at all, and I would have like to learn their history instead of all the information I got about Gouverneur Morris which I found to be such a bore.

I know that I like a book when I am disappointed that it is over. As Ian Frazier says, "Histories like this book don't really have endings." I grew up in the Bronx on Davidson Avenue (mentioned a few times) and Pelham Parkway. I attended good public schools including Bronx Science. I left in 1976 when NYC was in the throes of bankruptcy after teaching in NYC schools for five years. and then attended law school and worked as lawyer for 35 years in Atlanta. By the time I got into the book, Ian Frazier was my companion and friend. But I almost gave up reading during the first 200 pages about pre-history but by the time Frazier got to modern times, the pace quickened and I was enthralled. Getting to the end was well worth the time and the effort. My father and grandfather had a wholesale appliance business on Southern Blvd. which went out of business in the mid 1970s after 40 years due to their customers' abandoned and burned out buildings which Frazier aptly describes. But Frazier also describes that the Bronx is coming back and there is a struggle with gentrification and affordability.Thank you to Ian Frazier for writing this book about a history so lovingly told.P.S. Photos of some of the described locations and people would have been appreciated. I found that I was looking up people and places.

A delight to read a history of my borough of origin which ends on such an upbeat note. Unfortunately Frazier didn't have the New Yorker magazine's fact-checking staff vetting this book: I noted some errors (spellings of names and identification of neighborhoods) and glaring omissions (don't blame Co-op City for the Seventies' changes in the West Bronx without also noting NYU 's abandonment of that community!)It's also clear that Frazier's walking/research having occurred during COVID-19 didn't help: if the book were written today he'd have been able to see, say, that the Paradise Theater is rehabbed and beautiful inside, even if it hasn't been the draw the developer hoped.

I am in the midst of reading this beautifully written and accurately researched book, which will become a classic.

Absolutely beautiful book especially the hardback! Highly recommend… my son will be very happy at Xmas