In a stunning work of imagination and memory, author Kevin Baker brings to mesmerizing life a vibrant, colorful, thrilling, and dangerous New York City in the earliest years of the twentieth century. Dwarfs flock to Coney Island to live in the Little City, built to scale for one of their number, the Mad Carlotta, to rule as queen.There's a lot going on here, but it makes fascinating reading. A literary tour de force, a magnificent chronicle of a remarkable era and a place of dreams. A Tammany Hall leader tries to hold the corrupt organization together as he gradually goes mad because of venereal disease. One Jewish gangster is hiding from another Jewish gangster on Coney Island and happens to fall in love with the other gangster's sister. Women working long hours for low wages in the garment district try to organize a union. Edison.Because there are so many characters and so many subplots, a summary of the novel is difficult. Several of the characters in this story that takes place in New York City during the summer of 1909 are real people, including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who were visiting the United States that summer, and Thomas A. Kevin Baker's sweeping 1999 novel "Dreamland" has dozens of characters and, fortunately, a list of those characters at the beginning of the book to help readers tell who is who.
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