Other editions of book How the Other Half Lives

How the Other Half Lives was a pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future muckraking journalism by exposing the slums to New York City's upper and middle class. How The Other Half Lives quickly became a landmark in the annals of social reform. Riis documented the filth, disease, exploitation, and overcrowding that characterized the experience of more than one million immigrants. He helped push tenement reform to the front of New York's political agenda, and prompted then-Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to close down the police-run poor houses. Roosevelt later called Riis "the most useful citizen of New York". Riis's idea inspired Jack London to write a similar expos on London's East End, called People of the Abyss.

How the Other Half Lives was a pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future muckraking journalism by exposing the slums to New York City's upper and middle class. How The Other Half Lives quickly became a landmark in the annals of social reform. Riis documented the filth, disease, exploitation, and overcrowding that characterized the experience of more than one million immigrants. He helped push tenement reform to the front of New York's political agenda, and prompted then-Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to close down the police-run poor houses. Roosevelt later called Riis "the most useful citizen of New York". Riis's idea inspired Jack London to write a similar exposé on London's East End, called People of the Abyss.

First published in 1890, Jacob Riis's remarkable study of the horrendous living conditions of the poor in New York City had an immediate and extraordinary impact on society, inspiring reforms that affected the lives of millions of people.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In How the Other Half Lives, New Yorkers read with horror that three-quarters of the residents of their city were housed in tenements and that in those tenements rents were substantially higher than in better sections of the city. In his book Riis gave a full and detailed picture of what life in those slums was like, how the slums were created, how and why they remained as they were, who was forced to live there, and offered suggestions for easing the lot of the poor.

"How the Other Half Lives" is a chronicle of the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York at the end of the 19th century had to endure. Riis, who as an immigrant himself lived in these tenements on the lower east side of Manhattan, exposed the horrible conditions while working as a reporter for the New York Tribune. This book when first published in 1890 shed a much-needed light on the conditions of the poor. Presented here is a reproduction of that original 1890 edition with the numerous illustrations included in that volume.

A classic early example of “muck-racking” journalism, or reporting by reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt, “How the Other Half Lives” is a chronicle of the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York endured at the end of the 19th century. Danish immigrant Jacob A. Riis saw first-hand the horrible conditions of the Lower East Side of Manhattan following his immigration to the United States. A poor itinerant carpenter by trade, Riis would first begin documenting the filthy disease-ridden tenements of New York while working as a police reporter for the “New York Tribune”. “How the Other Half Lives” would first be published as an eighteen page article in the Christmas 1889 edition of “Scribner’s Magazine”. In the following year it would be expanded into a book of the same name. This book would shed a light on the housing conditions of the working-class and help to bring about much needed reforms. Presented here is a reproduction of that original 1890 edition with the numerous illustrations included in that volume. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

During the 1890s many people in upper- and middle-class society were unaware of the dangerous conditions in the slums among poor immigrants. Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant who himself could not originally find much work, hoped to expose the squalor of the 19th-century Lower East Side of Manhattan. After a successful career as a police reporter, he decided to publish a photojournal documenting these conditions using graphic descriptions, sketches, photographs, and statistics

How the Other Half Lives occupies a premier place on a small list of American books―along with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Jungle, Silent Spring, The Feminine Mystique, and Unsafe at Any Speed―that changed public opinion, influenced public policy, and left an indelible mark on history. The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1901 Scribner edition and includes all 47 of Riis’s unforgettable photographs, along with 2 maps. It is accompanied by Hasia Diner’s insightful introduction and detailed explanatory annotations. An unusually rich “Contexts” section includes autobiographical writings by Riis, observations of “the other half” by Riis contemporaries, including William T. Elsing, Thomas Byrnes, William Dean Howells, Lilliam W. Betts, John Spargo, and Lillian Wald, and contemporary evaluations of Riis and his seminal book by, among others, Warren P. Adams, Joseph B. Gilder, Margaret Burton, and Theodore Roosevelt.From the many hundreds of books and articles published on Riis and How the Other Half Lives, Hasia Diner has selected nineteen interpretations of the central aspects of author and work. Among these are Jacob Prager on Riis as immigrant and crusader; Louise Ware on Riis the police reporter, reformer, and “useful citizen”; Roy Lubove on the Progressive Movement and tenement reform; Richard Tuerk on Riis and the Jews; Maren Strange on American social documentary photography; Katrina Irving on immigrant mothers; and Timothy J. Gilfoyle on “street culture” and immigrant children.A Chronology of Riis’s life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included. 49 illustrations; 2 maps

In this is the classic indictment of slum life, written by one of the most famous reformers of the nineteenth century. "How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York" explained not only the living conditions in New York slums, but also in the sweatshops in some tenements which paid workers only a few cents a day. The book explains the plight of working children; they would work in factories and at other jobs. Some children became garment workers and newsies (newsboys). The effect was the tearing down of New York's worst tenements, sweatshops, and the reform of the city's schools. The book led to a decade of improvements in Lower East Side conditions, with sewers, garbage collection, and indoor plumbing all following soon after, thanks to public reaction.

Jacob Riis's famed 1890 photo-text addressed the problems of immigration, technological innovation, industry, and urban life at the dawn of the twentieth century. American studies instructor and freelance photographer David Leviatin edited this edition to be as faithful to the original text as possible; all interior photos are uncropped reprints made from Riis's original negatives, lantern slides, and prints.