How the Other Half Looks – The Lower East Side and the Afterlives of Images

"Illuminating at almost every turn, with a telling analytical expressiveness, an utterly persuasive narrative arc, and a tour-de-force impact. No work of art has made it more richly possible to see the usable pasts of the Lower East Side than Blair's book."--Thomas J. Ferraro, author of Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America

"This is an ambitious, erudite, and richly layered book, one that provides both panoramic breadth and rigorous in-depth analysis. With beautiful prose and great narrative force, Blair shows how the Lower East Side became an experimental space in which new techniques of visualizing and narrating modern America were not only tested but also generated."--Catherine Rottenberg, editor of Black Harlem and the Jewish Lower East Side