Maximum City is the biography of New York City. It has an exact purpose: to use the past to understand how New York came to be its glorious, dangerous self. From the first struggling settlers to the glitz of Nouvellle Society, it tells how the myth of New York was formed, and the calamities and realities that underlie all the headline assumptions about the city: Corruption, Excess, Glory, Danger and the sensuality which brings its bleak streets to life. But it also asks why - why cramped Manhattan should be high society's city; why such a metropolis fell into the hands of mobsters and con-men; why travellers always go in fear of its startling streets; why anyone who wanted success, a new life, even a new sex, had to come to Maximum City. It is full of the voices of New Yorkers, past and present, drawn from the newly available archives and direct reporting, as well as from letters, diaries, movies, maps and archaeologists' finds.