Few writers have both a keen eye for biographical detail and the ability to place those details in a portrait that resonates across history. Sam Roberts, who has worked for The New York Times for decades, is that kind of writer, as he deftly proves in his new book, profiling 31 not particularly famous New Yorkers who helped shape the city over the past 400 years. My favorite may be Audrey Munson, a figure model quick to disrobe for artists and whose likeness can be seen today in memorials throughout the city, most notably as Civic Fame, the 25-foot-tall, 5,000-pound statue that stands atop the Municipal Building, across from City Hall. How she ended up in a lunatic asylum at age 40, living there until her death, in 1996 at age 104, has all the makings of a potboiler. Except it is all true, and in the hands of Roberts, a stylishly told tale.
The perils of post-Soviet Russia in the mid-1990s were pretty clear to business buccaneers such as Bill Browder, who wrote about the murder of his friend and lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in his memoir Red Notice. But who in the new Russia wouldn’t love Elmo? Natasha Lance Rogoff was a young, untried producer when she flew to Moscow in 1993 with the seemingly benign task of creating a Russian version of Sesame Street.How hard could it be? Since 1972, there have been 30 different foreign adaptations of the PBS show.
