{"product_id":"9780679744375","title":"The Heart of the World","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"The history of Broadway has been written before, but never better. . . . The verbal energy that pours off these pages is enough to transform the hell of...Times Square into a rough-hewn heaven, neon lit and open all night. . . . The only thing wrong with this book is it isn't longer.\" —\u003ci\u003eNewsweek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNik Cohn ushers readers along the street he calls \"The Heart of the World.\" producing a book that is a resplendent pageant of New York's high—and low—life. Among the characters we meet are a golden-tongued cab driver who calls himself a \"collector of farces\"; a pickpocket with the terrifying gift of impersonating his marks; a heartbreakingly beautiful Dominican transvestite named Lush Life; strippers; pseudo-prophets; and a disgraced political veteran of the days when the graft was still honest. Conducted by a writer with the manic energy of a sideshow barker and the full-blooded lyricism of a raucous poet, this is a bebop odyssey along the Great White Way that reaches in implication far beyond the streets of New York to document the ever-evolving mixtures that make up America itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A lovely, bracing book, full to bursting with juicy, tasty, rancid life. While making its bawdy way through crowded spaces . . . it also travels through modern times . . . wondrous.\" —USA TODAY\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47014007374064,"sku":"9780679744375","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780679744375_p0.jpg?v=1763613901","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780679744375","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}