The Bowery Boys: New York City History

In 1890 the Danish-American journalist Jacob Riis turned his eye-opening reporting and lecture series into a ground-breaking book called How The Other Half Lives, a best seller which awoke Americans to the plight of the poor and laid the groundwork for the Progressive Era.Riis exposed more than a humanitarian crisis. He laid bare the city's complacent Gilded Age divide in revolutionary ways, most notably with the use of a new tool -- documentary photography.For our 400th episode, following our tradition of exploring the legacies of urban planners in past centennial shows (#100 Robert Moses, #200 Jane Jacobs, #300 Andrew Haswell Green), we finally look at the life of the crusading police reporter and social reformer who forced upper and middle class New Yorker to examine the living conditions within the city's poorest neighborhoods.Riis was himself an immigrant who spent his first years in the United States drifting from place to place, living on the street, his only companion a faithful dog. Journalism quite