A perfectly charming, sidesplittingly funny, intellectually entertaining illustrated history of the blocks, the buildings, and the guts of New York City, based on Julia Wertz's popular illustrated columns in The New Yorker and Harper's.

Here is New York as you've never seen it before; the New York behind the New York that you think you know so well. With drawings and comics in her signature style, Julia Wertz regales us with dozens of street scenes that show exactly what the city looked like "then" versus "now"; cartoons that detail the quirky, quintessentially New York histories that took place there, and several series of detail drawings including the clocks, mailboxes, lampposts and other ephemera that have evolved over the years. Tenements, Towers & Trash takes on a wild ride in a time-machine taxi, from the streets of the present-day Big Apple lined with big Apple stores and CVS's to the Days of Yore, when Mayor La Guardia declared pinball machines illegal and Greenpoint was the city's premier destination for vaudeville and film.

Not just for die-hard New Yorkers, this hilarious, charming book will appeal to any history lover or comics fan, as well as Julia's fans who are eager for more of her work.