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The Heart of the World

The Heart of the World

Summary

Nik Cohn had planned a trip around the world, but when a friend told him that Broadway is 'the world within itself', he started walking up the Great White Way, from Battery Park to Times Square. Escorted by a drum-playing Russian taxi driver, fuelled by duck soup and whiskey and sleeping in crackhouse hotels, Cohn encountered pickpockets, dancers, old magicians, disgraced politicians, epic storytellers, part-time messiahs, and an unforgettable transvestite called Lush Life. Hallucinogenic history, rogues' gallery, personal odyssey, this extraordinary saga is also an extended love letter to a dream of New York now lost.

Reviews

  • The verbal energy that pours off these pages is enough to transform the hell of places like Times Square into a roughhewn heaven, neon lit and open all night. The history of Broadway has been written before but never better...Overflowing with voluble "animal spirits," it is a feast for anyone who loves good stories. The only thing wrong with it is, it isn't longer.
    Newsweek

About the author

Nik Cohn

Nik Cohn was brought up in Derry, Northern Ireland. His books include I Am Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo, Ball the Wall, The Heart of the World, Need and Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap. He also wrote the story that gave rise to Saturday Night Fever and collaborated on Rock Dreams and Twentieth Century Dreams with the artist Guy Peellaert. He lives in New York.
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