Republic of Dreams : Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960

Rating:
Summary: Village-Sized Biographies
Review: The late Ross Westzsteon had crammed this big book with a wonderful amount of love and research and it shows on every page. Republic of Dreams (Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960) consists of mini-biographies for chapters as it is not so much a history of the Village as it is a history of the significant people who made the Village their home, sometimes briefly and sometime for life. The idea is presented that the Village was only truly the Village as it exists in lore in the 1910s. Three-quarters of the book is devoted to this period and this is the funniest, most touching and most fascinating part of the book. All of the lives covered in this first period intersect creating a true picture of a community of artists, actors, writers, labour leaders, society matrons, anarchists and hangers-on that create a unified whole in the book. The last quarter of the book (covering the next forty years) feels a little uncooked, while still being interesting. This book is an incredible place to spend a number of hours and a great chance to meet the people who made the Village the Village.

Rating:
Summary: Village-Sized Biographies
Review: The late Ross Westzsteon had crammed this big book with a wonderful amount of love and research and it shows on every page. Republic of Dreams (Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960) consists of mini-biographies for chapters as it is not so much a history of the Village as it is a history of the significant people who made the Village their home, sometimes briefly and sometime for life. The idea is presented that the Village was only truly the Village as it exists in lore in the 1910s. Three-quarters of the book is devoted to this period and this is the funniest, most touching and most fascinating part of the book. All of the lives covered in this first period intersect creating a true picture of a community of artists, actors, writers, labour leaders, society matrons, anarchists and hangers-on that create a unified whole in the book. The last quarter of the book (covering the next forty years) feels a little uncooked, while still being interesting. This book is an incredible place to spend a number of hours and a great chance to meet the people who made the Village the Village.

Rating:
Summary: 50 years of the Village's dynasty.
Review: Way back when America was still a conglomeration of British colonies, Greenwich Village was settled by the rich and merchant class of lower Manhattan as an escape from the recurring ravages of yellow fever and cholera. For this reason Greenwich Village was, essentially, never really mapped out; never really settled in accordance to any public plan. Of course, there was no grid plan either. Perhaps this haphazard beginning is what gave the area its combined flavor of anarchy and refinement. Where else would you find a Washington Square Park whose north end was the home to upper or, at least, bourgiose families, and whose south end was a magnet for immigrants not so rich?

Focusing on what was arguably the Village's heydays, the 50 years from 1910 to 1950, the late Ross Wetzsteon reveals to us a neighborhood as provincial and insular as any New England town in one way, and as forward-looking and worldly in another. REPUBLIC OF DREAMS is a look at the artists and writers, activists and thinkers, who populated this amazing world (e.g. Gould, Pollack, O'Neill, Reed, Sinclair). And, as Wetzsteon demonstrates, the Village sort of became an image for the entire world on the verge of modernism.

Prof. Wetzsteon's style is learned and academic, but far from stuffy or dull. And he peppers the book with anecdotes that are witty and tragic. It is a shame that Prof. Wetzsteon has been taken from us, but at least his REPUBLIC OF DREAMS will be with us for a long while.