Helluva Town: The Story of New York City During World War II - Hardcover

-- David Margolick is the author of "Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink" (2005) and is a contributor to "Newsweek".

"Richard Goldstein's "Helluva Town", like the hit show tune from the '40s that gave him the phrase, is brimful with affection for his native New York City. Through a series of fascinating vignettes in this tale of World War II New York, he introduces titans like La Guardia, Morgenthau, and Rockefeller, but also Sono Osato, a Japanese-American dancer whose father was among those swept into the internment camps, and Seymour Wittek, a Bronx Coastguarder who became eyewitness to a major threat to the port of New York. Sailors, dockhands, artists, canteen workers, intellectuals, actors, army men, and a myriad of others move through these pages, along with Ethel Merman, Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, and Irving Berlin. As a fellow New Yorker, I reveled in the vistas into our shared history, and in an era of extraordinary human accomplishment."

--Philip B. Kunhardt III, co-author "Looking for Lincoln", 2008 and "Lincoln, LifeSize", 2009.

"Richard Goldstein has produced a rollicking, finely reported tale of the coming-of-age of the "capital of the world." All of the actors in the greatest drama of the 20th Century--Nazi spies, movie stars, talented immigrants, and the American soldiers who save democracy--come together on history's center stage--New York. Helluva Town is one helluva ride."

-Jonathan Alter, "Newsweek", author of "The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope"

"New York is big, and much of this swaggering, nostalgic history recounts the sheer size of the city's contribution to the Allied victory: the prodigies of shipbuilding and repair at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; the 81,000 WAVES churned out at Hunter College; the millions of soldiers sent overseas from New York's harbor after consoling themselves with America's glitziest nightlife. But the story's New Yorkness doesn't resonate from the grand logistics or the war stories--wan spy capers, the accidental shelling of Wall Street, the bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building--with which "Times"-man Goldstein ("America at D-Day") bombards us. More evocative are his accounts of how the upheaval became fodder for the city's efflorescent culture. Insouciant Manhattanites partied in the streets during civil defense drills instead of taking cover; Broadway tunefully repurposed patriotic and martial themes in "Oklahoma""!" and "On the Town"; and at the Stage Door canteen, a nightclub for servicemen staffed by celebrities, a GI could score a dance with Lauren Bacall. In these engaging vignettes, New York--lively, brave, humane--conquers not just the Axis but war itself."

--"Publishers Weekly", Starred Review

"Thanks to exemplary use of many firsthand accounts, Goldstein captures the spirit of the wartime city, offering enormous appeal to fans of New York City, as well as to students of World War II history." --Library Journal

""Helluva Town" is a helluva read...a fascinating look at a remarkable time and a remarkable town." --Associated Press

"Goldstein's well-researched "Helluva Town" is a rich, wonderful wartime whirl through a great city." --"Philadelphia Inquirer"

"[Goldstein] recalls patriots as well as spies; heroism as well as rising anti-Semitism and racism. A complex look at New York during WWII." --Booklist

."..a splendid study of the stay-at-homes during those hectic years... Goldstein creates a vivid picture of everyday life at home in New York City during [World War II]." --Maury Allen, "The Columnist"