How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York

Jacob August Riis

Jan 1890 · Charles Scribner's Sons

About this ebook

"Jacob Riis's illustrated tour of New York's slums had an immediate and extraordinary impact on society, inspiring reforms that changed the face of the city. In 1890, when the book was published, the Lower East Side was a landscape of teeming streets and filthy tenements crowded with immigrants living in dreadful conditions. How the Other Half Lives brings them to life - the Italians, Jews, Bohemians (Czechs and Slovaks), Blacks, and Chinese - in precise descriptions of their habits and traditions, jobs and wages, rents paid and meals eaten, and explores the effects of crime, poverty, alcohol, and lack of education and opportunity on adults and children alike. Riis's reliance on specific, hard facts as the tools and weapons of social criticism pioneered the style of crusading journalism that continues today. His use of photographs ... to put faces to his stories was a landmark in photojournalism"--From publisher's description (a later edition).

Ratings and reviews

Jacob Riis' first and most influential book, How the Other Half Lives details the lives of the impoverished of New York City's slums at the end of the 19th century. His expose was highly influential and brought about a number of reforms within the City, yet the tome is filled with almost comical stereotypes and prejudices about the various races and cultures found within the domain of the tenements, sidestreets and alleyways that the poor called, for lack of a better word, home. Despite this massive shortcoming (a sign of the times Riis lived in), Other Half is an engaging read and showcases the severe plight too many endured during this period in history, moreso than the most depressingly dour of Dickensian prose.

Some of the most importance of this book and of Jacob Riis's word were the photographs he took. Those photos are illegible in this scan.