Gregory Woods

Marvelous, informative, charming, humorous, youthfully urbane, a natural history of the metr0polis for the young at heart. Hynes channels his wild love of New York in a series of forty beautifully delivered and imaginatively illustrated prose poems. His astute historical perspective on the urban carnival of the animals is narrated through the voices of the experts and advocates who foster their place and survival here. Like the true city boy who was Teddy Roosevelt, he brings a romantic joy to the natural history of the island at the center of the world, as he recounts the stories and fortunes of the Natives, the Legends, the Workers and the Returned; mastodons, parrots and cockroaches included..