"The View From Apartment Four" by Skip Rozin - On Loving and Leaving New York

Skip Rozin has captured the story of his life in NYC - and beyond - that satisfies like a freshly toasted bagel with a generous schmear of cream cheese. He occupied Apartment Four at 336 West 77th Street for almost fifty years - from the tumultuous 1960s through 2011. This book - subtitled "On Loving and Leaving New York," paints a vivid picture of all of the reasons why Rozin developed such a complex love/hate relationship with the unique metropolis that is NYC.

This moving book offers a look at the tension between stability and change. Over half a century, the cramped Apartment Four offered Rozin a haven, first as a home to a single young professional, then to a newly married couple. When Rozin and his wife brought triplets home from the hospital, they had to find a larger place to live, but he held onto the rent controlled Apartment Four as his office and writing retreat. Even when the family moved to Cape Cod, and he and his wife eventually divorced, he kept the apartment as his haven whenever business and nostalgia called him back to the city.

The author is a gifted writer, carving out a career in non-fiction that spanned the decades covered in this book. As seen through the lens of Rozin, his career, his growing family, we see a New York that changes rapidly while still holding on to its essence. We see through Rozin's eyes the iconic Dakota of John Lennon, Lincoln Center, the bagel shops and Zabar's deli on W. 79th, Needle Park, Central Park West, West End Avenue, Westside Highway. NYC is a city of distinct neighborhoods, and Rozin offers up a tantalizing potpourri of the sights, sounds, smells, and denizens of his beloved Upper West Side.

Through the microcosm of Rozin's life, family, and career, we see New York as a complex web of roots, transitions, and transformations . As a result of seeing the city through Rozin's clear eyes, on my next visit to NYC, I will walk the streets of the Upper West Side with a fresh perspective and appreciation of what was, what is, and what is still to come.

Enjoy!

Al