From award-win­ning New York Times reporter Sam Roberts, the sto­ry of the world’s most excep­tion­al city, told through 31 lit­tle-known yet piv­otal inhab­i­tants who helped define it.

In Sam Robert­s’s pul­sat­ing his­to­ry of the world’s most excep­tion­al metrop­o­lis, greet the city anew through thir­ty-one unique New York­ers you’ve prob­a­bly nev­er heard of-just in time for the city’s 400th birthday.

The New York­ers intro­duces the first woman to appear nude in a motion pic­ture, becom­ing the face of Civic Fame as Miss Man­hat­tan; the cou­ple whose soirée end­ed the Gild­ed Age with an embar­rass­ing bang; and the hus­band and wife who invent­ed the mod­ern celebri­ty talk show. It reveals the vic­tim of the city’s first record­ed mur­der in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry and the high school dropout who slashed crime rates in the twen­ti­eth. The noto­ri­ous mob­ster who was impe­ri­ous­ly ban­ished from the city and the woman who suc­cess­ful­ly sued a bus com­pa­ny for racial dis­crim­i­na­tion a cen­tu­ry before Rosa Parks.

Some deserved mon­u­ments, but their grandeur was over­looked or for­got­ten. Oth­ers shep­herd­ed the city through its per­pet­u­al evo­lu­tion, but dis­creet­ly. Vir­tu­al­ly all have van­ished into New York’s uncombed his­to­ry. The New York­ers is a liv­ing biog­ra­phy of the world’s great­est city, and no one knows New York bet­ter than Sam Roberts-or is bet­ter at bring­ing its his­to­ry to life.