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Mannahatta: A Natural History Of New York City (2009)

by Eric W. Sanderson(Favorite Author)

3.99 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0810996332 (ISBN13: 9780810996335)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harry N. Abrams

review 1: Fascinating look at the changes in Manhattan over the past four hundred years. Having lived in the city, I love the history of how the city has changed, and I love to look at old maps of the city, fitting in the images of the way it was then with the way it is now.[return][return]From a natural history standpoint, this is a perfect example of that -- the renderings of how the island must have looked in 1609 and the descriptions of how the team that worked on the images came to make them are equally fascinating. Anyone who is familiar with Manhattan will love to see the differences in the city, although perhaps only those who have been all the way uptown to Inwood and Washington Heights can truly appreciate the information presented here.
review 2: I read this f... moreor the spatial modeling & GIS methods used for the Mannahatta project. In that regard, I was rewarded w/ rich detail & well-made, beautifully mapped, intensely researched work recreating the historic landscapes, hydrography, topography, habitats, soil types, & species distributions of Manhattan island in 1609. He describes the processes step-by-step of the models he wrote & the layers he overlaid, making his methods very applicable not just for his Mannahatta project, but for other scientists hoping to do similar work in other locations.What I did not like was his ridiculous assumptions of what Manhattan will be in 2409. He assumes that New Yorkers can have their cake and eat it too, w/o personal sacrifice, much in the same way that people are living now. With the global context of resource exploitation, habitat degradation, climate change, & overpopulation that the world is dealing w/ now, this is unrealistic. less

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