"Sidewalk will radically change the way we think about 'the public sphere.'" –Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo Mama's Disfunktional!
"An inspired, yet strategically conceived work that restores a sense of new possibility and passion to ethnography just as it was threatened by cliche through its recent popularity." –
George Marcus, author of Ethnography through Thick and Thin "[
Sidewalk] is in the best tradition of participant observation. If I were still teaching, I would want all of my students to read this book." –
William Foote Whyte, author of Street Corner Society "An exciting and original approach to the problems of urban life, informed by years of intensive participation and by a deep understanding of social science thinking. No one has combined theory and intimate knowledge of city streets as successfully. A masterpiece of fieldwork." –
Howard S. Becker, author of Outsiders "Duneier must be one of the outstanding ethnographers of our time: he renders visible what typically remains submerged as we take in the world at street level. This is a deep, complex, moving book that yanks you out of your own lived experiences of that world and draws you to another." –
Saskia Sassen, author of The Global City "[A] magnificent book . . . Duneier is a professor of sociology, but he has a superb journalist's ear for quotes and the ability to limn character and scene. He writes, that is, as very few sociologists do: he stays on for years, immersed in his subject, as virtually no journalist will do." –
Richard Eder, The New York Times "A necessary book . . . A work of frontline reportage, an inquiry into the economic and political and moral forces that are busy reconfiguring the city, [and] an urgent plea for justice, however couched it is in the careful, procedural, understating style of fieldwork." –
Luc Sante, Village Voice Literary Supplement "
Sidewalk is an intellectual treat and a student turn-on. I'm using it in my urban studies course and as a key reading for introductory sociology." –
Harvey Molotch, co-author, Urban Fortunes "Insightful and compelling . . . . Capture[s] the pathos, struggle, joy, honor and dignity of the men and women of 'the sidewalk.'" –
Elaine Rivera, Chicago Tribune "
Sidewalk brings us close to the hustle and bustle of urban street life–the book is a knowing, thoughtful exploration that will earn it a place among the classics of the documentary tradition." –
Robert Coles "A nuanced study of the lives of impoverished street vendors in New York's Greenwich Village . . . . A work that adds much to our understanding of race, poverty, and our reactions to them." –
Kirkus Reviews "I suspect this exemplary ethnography will, like
Street Corner Society, speak to generations of readers . . . . The photos by Ovie Carter . . . and the appendix on method are worth the price of entry . . . . The entire book demonstrates . . . scrupulous care, caring, and respect . . . . Duneier uses theory to help him understand and explicate his observations, never for its own sake. Like all classic fieldworkers he is open to learn, to change, as a result of the ethnographic experience." –
Joan Cassell, Washington University, American Anthropologist