Rating: 
Summary: "...beyond the gate that shuts this world of woe off..."
Review: "Pitiful as these are, sights and sounds infinitely more saddening await us beyond the gate that shuts this world of woe off from one whence the light of hope and reason have gone out together" (p 193).Like a ghost out of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Jacob Riis tours the reader through the nightmare existence in the New York City slums of the 1800's. Although, as Luc Sante states in his introduction, Riis' sole purpose for writing this book is to "call attention to the horrendous living conditions of the poor in New York City and insist on reform" (p ix), Riis also presents another underlying theme by unequivocally proving that the more people isolate themselves from the rest of the world, the better chance there is for gross victimization of those less fortunate: simplistically speaking, the rich get richer; the poor get poorer; the wider the gap grows in between (dispersion of our so-called middle class.) Riis' talent lies in his use of poetically descriptive language, saturated with metaphor and alliteration, alongside contrasting factual accounts of harsh reality. The reader is mesmerized by the rhythmic sound of lines such as "Down near the Battery the West Side emerald would be soiled by a dirty stain, spreading rapidly like a splash of ink on a sheet of blotting paper" (p 25), but then shocked by the stark conditions of tenement life as given in the form of personal stories, photographs, legislation, statistics, and blueprints. Riis writes about the windowless, airless rooms and the unbelievably filthy crowded living conditions. He recounts stories of bitter violence toward children and between the races, as well as degradation and oppression among women, the old, and the infirm. The reader is sickened with wretched stories of infanticide and mortality rates among the children. Riis unapologetically interjects his novel with stereotypical remarks and his own bigoted opinions of the people inhabiting the various ethnically divided "wards." Some of his include those such as "between the dull gray of the Jew, his favorite color, and the Italian red, would be seen squeezed in on the map a sharp streak of yellow, marking the narrow boundaries of Chinatown" (p 24), and "poverty, abuse, and injustice alike the negro accepts with imperturbable cheerfulness...He loves fine clothes and good living a good deal more than he does a bank account" (p 117). Through the obviously prejudicial film that covers Riis' novel from beginning to end, the reader is able to perceive a sense of his true passion of wanting to make a positive difference in society. His previous stereotypical remarks about African Americans are somewhat softened when he later comments on the injustice towards them: "...when the account is made up between the races, it shall be claimed that he falls short of the result to be expected from twenty-five years of freedom, it may be well to turn to the other side of the ledger and see how much of the blame is borne by the prejudice and greed that have kept him from rising under a burden of responsibility to which he could hardly be equal" (p 119). Riis is an example of a pioneer whose work, sacrifice, and commitment have shaped our country and our world. By educating the public through his journalistic indictments, he provided the catalyst for the ensuing slow process of reform. What places Riis on a higher level than others who have written exposés is the fact that he not only provided what he thought to be the main causes for the deplorable situation of tenement life, but also provided an outline of a well thought out plan for improvement that included detailed legislation, floor plans for remodeling, and sound economical postulations. Luc Sante states that Riis does not "inquire very deeply into the causes of the conditions he describes" (p xi), but one can logically infer very plainly many individual causes and effects that ultimately affect the whole, such as greed, gross lack of education of a whole segment of society, a government and society who chose not to care (or may have felt it did not have the time or resource to care,) growth of nation that was infinitely more vast than expected, depression, oppression, and inertia (on both ends of the class spectrum.) Riis' book is not only a ghost from the past, but also a ghost from the present that haunts our country and our world today. One can still see economically imbalanced conditions that contribute to the growing lower class. Insightful remarks made over one hundred years ago make one disgusted to realize that seemingly little has been learned: "Nothing is now better understood than that the rescue of the children is the key to the problem of city poverty, as presented for our solution to-day; that a character may be formed where to reform it would be a hopeless task" (p 139). This book should be read for the beauty of the prose, the horror of the content, and the insight to be gained from both. Riis succeeds in showing the reader that our world is a unit existing of one: indeed one world. Riis presents an inarguably complete and comprehensive exposition of "how the other half lives."
Rating:
Summary: Still the Same
Review: "The business of housing the poor, if it is to amount to anything, must be business, as it was business with our fathers to put them where they are. As charity, pastime, or fad, it will miserably fail, always and everywhere" (p. 201). Jacob A. Riis, in his book, How the Other Half Lives, vividly describes the human condition of the tenements of New York during the late 1800's. The author provides not only a physical description of the tenement buildings but delves deeper into the people who live there and why they don't leave the pits of filth and despair.
Jacob Riis, presents a compelling account of the intricate business of managing the slums of New York and maintaining the status quo among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to America to seek a new and prosperous life. After arriving they found they were trapped in a life of high rents and low wages with little hope for improvement of their circumstances. What little help was available seemed to be in the form of charity that couldn't sustain the prideful immigrants desire to succeed in this country.
The reader is taken on a tour of the slums and introduced to the groups of immigrants nationality by nationality and given a full account of the author's stereotypical ideas about their good and bad points. Of the Italian Riis says he only spends time indoors when it's raining or he is sick. When the sun shines the entire population seeks the streets carrying on all facets of life (p. 47). He further says the Italian is a born gambler (p 44) and learns slowly, if at all (p. 42) so that his job of working the ash carts is simply suited for him. On the positive side Riis says the Italian is as honest as he is hot-headed (p. 45).
The Chinese are a stealth and secretive group with all activities going on behind closed doors (p75). They are also attributed with stealing the women of the white man and leading them into the grip of opium giving them up only to the Charity Hospital or the Potter's Field (p76). On the positive side the Chinese are noted for their scrupulous neatness (p 78).
The Bohemians are an honest group but rumored as being anarchists. They are fond of beer and will live at the highest means available thus they have nothing saved for a rainy day (105). He is caught in a tough position of working for poor wages and facing rising rents with no way out. For if he rebels against low wages and high rent he loses his home and job; the two are connected as cigar making takes place in the home utilizing supplies provided by the landlords.
To the Jews money is their God and they work in the tenements crowding the area of Ludlow Street more densely than the crowding of Old London (p 83). They are suited to baking as bread is cheap and their love of money and the saving of it is suited to eating bread. They are also known for their work in the clothing industry. Of the Blacks, Riis stereotypes them as cleaner and better tenants but none-the-less they pay higher rents for no one else will live in a tenement after the black man has. While much of the reading is based on the stereotypes formed by the author it still provides a vivid picture of the human condition including the live's of tramps in stale beer dives and the thugs who cause fear and trouble in the streets. Both tramps and toughs profess that the world owes them a living (p64). The author also relates the degree to which the upper class try to distort the reality of life in the tenements, classifying starvation as "improper nourishment". In one case starvation led one poor man to thoughts of murdering his own children. In his madness he had only one conscious thought: that the town should not take the children. "Better that I take care of them myself ," he repeated to himself as he ground the axe to an edge.(p 127).
Due to this book, Riis was able to draw public attention to the horrendous living conditions of the poor in New York City, and to insist on reform. The reforms he recommended were largely undertaken, although it was a very gradual process (p. ix). This may be partially attributed to political factors relating to the fact that political contests were won in the areas with the fully packed lodging houses (p 71). With this writing Riis does not allow the world to forget easily, what it does not like to remember (p196).
Rating:
Summary: Still the Same
Review: "The business of housing the poor, if it is to amount to anything, must be business, as it was business with our fathers to put them where they are. As charity, pastime, or fad, it will miserably fail, always and everywhere" (p. 201). Jacob A. Riis, in his book, How the Other Half Lives, vividly describes the human condition of the tenements of New York during the late 1800's. The author provides not only a physical description of the tenement buildings but delves deeper into the people who live there and why they don't leave the pits of filth and despair.
Jacob Riis, presents a compelling account of the intricate business of managing the slums of New York and maintaining the status quo among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to America to seek a new and prosperous life. After arriving they found they were trapped in a life of high rents and low wages with little hope for improvement of their circumstances. What little help was available seemed to be in the form of charity that couldn't sustain the prideful immigrants desire to succeed in this country.
The reader is taken on a tour of the slums and introduced to the groups of immigrants nationality by nationality and given a full account of the author's stereotypical ideas about their good and bad points. Of the Italian Riis says he only spends time indoors when it's raining or he is sick. When the sun shines the entire population seeks the streets carrying on all facets of life (p. 47). He further says the Italian is a born gambler (p 44) and learns slowly, if at all (p. 42) so that his job of working the ash carts is simply suited for him. On the positive side Riis says the Italian is as honest as he is hot-headed (p. 45).
The Chinese are a stealth and secretive group with all activities going on behind closed doors (p75). They are also attributed with stealing the women of the white man and leading them into the grip of opium giving them up only to the Charity Hospital or the Potter's Field (p76). On the positive side the Chinese are noted for their scrupulous neatness (p 78).
The Bohemians are an honest group but rumored as being anarchists. They are fond of beer and will live at the highest means available thus they have nothing saved for a rainy day (105). He is caught in a tough position of working for poor wages and facing rising rents with no way out. For if he rebels against low wages and high rent he loses his home and job; the two are connected as cigar making takes place in the home utilizing supplies provided by the landlords.
To the Jews money is their God and they work in the tenements crowding the area of Ludlow Street more densely than the crowding of Old London (p 83). They are suited to baking as bread is cheap and their love of money and the saving of it is suited to eating bread. They are also known for their work in the clothing industry. Of the Blacks, Riis stereotypes them as cleaner and better tenants but none-the-less they pay higher rents for no one else will live in a tenement after the black man has. While much of the reading is based on the stereotypes formed by the author it still provides a vivid picture of the human condition including the live's of tramps in stale beer dives and the thugs who cause fear and trouble in the streets. Both tramps and toughs profess that the world owes them a living (p64). The author also relates the degree to which the upper class try to distort the reality of life in the tenements, classifying starvation as "improper nourishment". In one case starvation led one poor man to thoughts of murdering his own children. In his madness he had only one conscious thought: that the town should not take the children. "Better that I take care of them myself ," he repeated to himself as he ground the axe to an edge.(p 127).
Due to this book, Riis was able to draw public attention to the horrendous living conditions of the poor in New York City, and to insist on reform. The reforms he recommended were largely undertaken, although it was a very gradual process (p. ix). This may be partially attributed to political factors relating to the fact that political contests were won in the areas with the fully packed lodging houses (p 71). With this writing Riis does not allow the world to forget easily, what it does not like to remember (p196).
Rating: 
Summary: history teacher
Review: "The first tenement New York knew bore the mark of Cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the writing was deciphered." "How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York" is arguably one of the most important books published in the United States in the 19th-century ("Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are the obvious other contenders for the title). Together with its sequel "Battle with the Slum," this book uses sensationalist photographs and prose (as the above opening line indicates) from Jacob Riis to document the appalling living conditions in the Lower East Side of New York City at the turn-of-the-century. The chilling photographs of the filth and squalor of these tenements are unforgettable and while the prose does get a bit lurid at times, this famous journalistic record exposing the poverty and degradation of the New York slums is also a sociology treatise wherein Riis explores the evolution of the tenement. Within this context, the birth of the airshaft takes on profound significance as Riis tries to establish some of the causes for the effects he has documented as the premier social reformer in American history. The idea that this book is too dated to have an impact today is, to say the least, a curious position. In its day "How the Other Half Lives" was a rhetorical document, constructed by Riis to advance an irrefutable position that something needed to be down about these conditions. Riis was a major social reformer and his book is of historic importance. Even more than a century removed from its publication it is still a powerful work. If he were walking the streets of New York City today no doubt Riis would be photographing and telling of the plight of the homeless and the "modern" projects that have replaced the tenements of his own time. At the very least, it gives readers a clear sense of what poverty and degradation was like at the previous turn of the century.
Rating: 
Summary: A major work by one of the nation's premier social reformers
Review: "The first tenement New York knew bore the mark of Cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the writing was deciphered." "How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York" is arguably one of the most important books published in the United States in the 19th-century ("Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are the obvious other contenders for the title). Together with its sequel "Battle with the Slum," this book uses sensationalist photographs and prose (as the above opening line indicates) from Jacob Riis to document the appalling living conditions in the Lower East Side of New York City at the turn-of-the-century. The chilling photographs of the filth and squalor of these tenements are unforgettable and while the prose does get a bit lurid at times, this famous journalistic record exposing the poverty and degradation of the New York slums is also a sociology treatise wherein Riis explores the evolution of the tenement. Within this context, the birth of the airshaft takes on profound significance as Riis tries to establish some of the causes for the effects he has documented as the premier social reformer in American history. The idea that this book is too dated to have an impact today is, to say the least, a curious position. In its day "How the Other Half Lives" was a rhetorical document, constructed by Riis to advance an irrefutable position that something needed to be down about these conditions. Riis was a major social reformer and his book is of historic importance. Even more than a century removed from its publication it is still a powerful work. If he were walking the streets of New York City today no doubt Riis would be photographing and telling of the plight of the homeless and the "modern" projects that have replaced the tenements of his own time. At the very least, it gives readers a clear sense of what poverty and degradation was like at the previous turn of the century.
Rating:
Summary: The One that Started It All
Review: For all intents and purposes, Jacob Riis' HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES is the birth of photojournalism. And this new genre, like the first movies and radio programs, fascinated its audience. Riis' sharp essays are matched only by his sharp eye for photography. I don't know which made more of an impact on me: the text or the pictures of unspeakable misery. But I think it's a safe bet to say that Riis' contemporaries were fixated more on the photographs. (After all, Riis turned to photography AFTER his published essays seemed to have little effect.) In any event, the result, then as now, is a provocative, compassionate, and angry work that exposed to the middle and upper classes of his time the effects of their indifference, at best, or the effects of their roles as slumlords and sweatshop owners, at worst. The only jarring aspect of the book is Riis' use of ethnic stereotyping. He makes several not-nice remarks about Jews, Chinamen, Italians, etc. However, we must not impose our early 21st Century values on a late 19th Century man. These types of remarks were commonplace back in the pre-politically correct times. In any event, Riis' overall intention was to help these people get out of their horrid conditions and not to slur their heritages. One last note, Luc Sante's introduction is brilliant and serves the book very well. Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points Concluded, a Novel
Rating:
Summary: How did those immigrants survive ?
Review: How did our grandfathers and great-grandfathers (and great-great, I suppose) survive immigration and the slums? What was life like on the Lower East Side of New York? For those of us whose family has only been in the US for a few generations, this is a must-read. Whether Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese or Polish, German, Russian, hordes of refugees ended up in New York on the promise of a better life. Reading Riis' book reads like the newspaper in some ways; entrepreneurs lured poor people from Eastern Europe and contracted out their labor in sweat shops in the US. Sound familiar? But what is not so familiar are the living conditions in the tenements, dark, unventilated cages in blocks of buildings that rented for a surprising high rent to people who died by the thousands in the unsanitary conditions. Farm animals had it better. Why was rent so high? Supply and demand. Cheaper rent was to be had in Brooklyn and the outlying (as yet unincorporated) boroughs, but the WORK was in Manhattan, where you could get by as a tailor, a seamstress, a peddler or in some illegitimate activity. The conditions will make you cry; the story of foundling babies (abandoned newborns) is astonishing. A cradle was put outside a Catholic Church and instead of a baby each night, racks of babies appeared. The Church had to establish foundling hospitals run by nuns, who persuaded the unwed or impoverished mothers to nurse the baby they gave up, plus another baby (women can usually nurse two, though these malnourished women must have been hard-pressed.) The child mortality rate, especially in the "back tenements" or buildings built on to the back of others (dark and airless) was incredible. I wish the plates in the book were of better quality; Riis took many photographs, but the reproduction here is poor and they are hard to see. I recommend that if you are interested in this subject from seeing "The Gangs of New York" or for genealogical reasons, that you visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and see the buildings for yourself. Even cleaned up and no longer packed with unwashed people, they are heart-rending.
Rating:
Summary: A great exposee.
Review: How the other Half Lives does an excellent job of bringing to light the plight and destitution of early immigrants to this nation. As Riis systematically moves from one ethnic group to another, one realizes how much discrimination was shown to newcomers. Riis' own descriptions of the immigrants provide evidence to the prevalent feelings of that era. Overall, Riis' work is eye-opening and instructive.
Rating:
Summary: What a book!
Review: I had to chose a book to read for my AP History Class, and I thouhgt this book would be very interesting; and it was. This book made me realize how life really was in New York during the early 1900's. Riis's pictures give you a feel for it all. If you are interested in true life stories and classic pictures than I would suggest this book.
Rating:
Summary: How the Other Half Lives
Review: I had to read this and write an esay on this book for mu history 1302 class. At first, I found myself gettign depressed by the horrible consitions that the people in these dwelings endured. After continuing with the book,I began to find myself fascinated. It is like actually being in the time period that Riis speaks of. The book is very well written and breaks a lot of boundaries. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. It makes you very aware of the problems that were, and the problems that are.
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