Personally I have long thought of New York as a city so American it no longer felt American - incredibly diverse and capitalistic and free. It's messy and chaotic and inconsistent. Big, bold, beautiful, trashy and complicated.
I always thought New York was the epitome of a certain kind of Americanism. In the book, Shorto compares the "New York" version to the authoritarian, moralistic, Puritan version that arose in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. These two ideas have competed throughout American history. Unfortunately, the latter has been more in vogue in recent years.
Personally I have long thought of New York as a city so American it no longer felt American - incredibly diverse and capitalistic and free. It's messy and chaotic and inconsistent. Big, bold, beautiful, trashy and complicated.
I always thought New York was the epitome of a certain kind of Americanism. In the book, Shorto compares the "New York" version to the authoritarian, moralistic, Puritan version that arose in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. These two ideas have competed throughout American history. Unfortunately, the latter has been more in vogue in recent years.