I recommend this book for a select group: those who have a good bit of familiarity with New York City and are fond of the rivers and the harbor. If you live in New York City, but you generally ignore the waterfront, you won't enjoy this book. If you love the water, but you don't know a lot about Manhattan particularly, you won't enjoy this book. If you like your nonfiction books to have a dispassionate and generally even narrator, you won't like this book. I fall into that small band that 1. lives in New York, 2. loves the waterfront in New York, and 3. can stomach a writer occasionally digressing to rambling. My one nagging annoyance with Mr. Lopate is that he slams on runners (and I count myself a runner) as just skimming the surface and not truly connecting to the waterfront. I'm almost willing to overlook that slight because he admits that he's not athletically inclined, so he has no valid perspective there.