About the book, from the publisher:New York is the city that never sleeps. This luminous book peels back the cover of darkness over the city as it hums along in the night, revealing a hidden world populated by the thousands of women and men who work and live the nightshift. Written with beauty and grace, Nightshift NYC weaves together cultural critique, vivid reportage, and arresting photographs to trace the inverted logic of the city at night. Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman spent a year interviewing and shadowing fry cooks and coffee jockeys, train conductors, cab hacks, and dozens of others who keep the city running when the sun goes down. Investigating familiar places such diners and delis, they explore some less familiar ones as well—taking us on a walking tour of homelessness in Manhattan, onto a fishing boat out of Brooklyn, and into other little-known corners of the night. Traveling past the threshold of voyeurism into the lives of real people, they depict a social space entirely apart—one that is highly structured and inherently subversive. Together, these stories open a compelling view on contemporary urban life and, along the way, reveal the soul of the city itself.Russell Leigh Sharman is a writer and anthropologist. He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Oxford University in 1999, and now teaches at Brooklyn College. Cheryl Harris Sharman has written for publications including Scientific American Online, The Lancet, The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) magazine, Perspectives in Health, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Central America’s The Tico Times.
Visit the Nightshift NYC website and blog.
The Page 99 Test: Nightshift NYC.
--Marshal Zeringue
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