Co-sponsored by Jefferson Market Library

Join us for a unique firsthand exploration of our changing neighborhoods and city. Hello (and goodbye) To All That (Post Hill Press) is a memoir about a child of suburban Chicago who grew up hearing fabled stories about the New York City of his father’s day—from the World’s Fair to Mayor La Guardia to his grandfather’s drugstore in Midtown—and who eventually moves to New York as an aspiring writer and teacher. The book explores the evolution of New York City from the days of Tower Records and The Village Voice through the era of cell phones and bike lanes, while also providing an up-close view of larger transformational events. The book combines funny and moving stories from daily life (the struggles of apartment living, the quirky routines of café-goers, the moral dilemmas of being a cyclist) with important historical moments: witnessing 9/11 from his roof deck and living through the city’s troubled aftermath; hearing Barack Obama in Washington Square Park with 20,000 people; living in a darkened swath of Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy; teaching uprooted students from the epicenter of the pandemic; and having an embarrassing encounter with Rudy Giuliani a few weeks before the 20th anniversary of 9/11. 

Home to some of the country’s worst tragedies and upheavals, New York has also been a place of national recovery and inspiration. The book presents intriguing encounters with everyday characters, celebrities, and writers; ironic intersections between the past and present; and a touching intergenerational story of father and son.

J​onathan Liebson is an essayist and reviewer whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The American Scholar, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Time Out New York, Tablet Magazine, Texas Observer, and The Georgia Review, among many other journals, and in the anthology Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (Random House). He currently lives in New York and teaches courses on writing, literature, and culture at Eugene Lang College of The New School.