New York University and the City: An Illustrated History.

• Author: Cordasco, Francesco

****University and college histories, more often than not, have been written as memorial volumes, chronologically skewed and schematically sketching an institution's past. This is not the case with New York University and the City, whose authors have written a history set in the socio-economic contexts of urban growth and the evolving search for educational opportunity in the great metropolis.

NYU's history is an integral part of the history of New York City, and it is in these urban perspectives that the framework of the university's founding and its evolution are cast. The school was founded in 1831 by a group of prominent citizens who envisaged a university that "corresponded with the spirit and wants of the age and country," a non-denominational institution that would enlarge the opportunities of education for those qualified and inclined. The new university was to be "a social investment and a direct response to the needs of the rising mercantile class of New York."

In a series of multifaceted chapters, the authors trace NYU's story across the 19th century and down to the present time...