8 Must-Read Books Set in and Around Columbia University and New York City

As we eagerly await the arrival of new and returning students to campus, Columbia News has put together a list of eight great books that will introduce you to the many neighborhoods around Columbia University and New York City, more broadly.

For help creating this list, we turned to Anya Schiffrin, co-director of the Technology, Policy, and Innovation Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs—and a lifelong resident of the Upper West Side.

Here are her favorite books (in alphabetical order); tell us yours and more, including movies, songs, and your “only-in-New-York” stories. 

Down the Up Staircase by Bruce Haynes and Syma Solovitch

Down the Up Staircase is the story of the Haynes family and the Harlem brownstone they lived in over three generations. Co-authors and partners Bruce Haynes and Syma Solovitch weave together the stories of a house, a neighborhood, and the lives of one Black family.

Beginning with the Harlem Renaissance, this memoir is an account of the pressures and obstacles faced by the Haynes family and an atmospheric description of Harlem over the decades.  

Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

Free Food for Millionaires is a novel by Min Jin Lee whose main character, Casey Han, moves to Manhattan after four years on a scholarship at another Ivy League university and having deferred admission to Columbia Law School.

Having grown up in Queens—where her parents, Korean immigrants, still live and work—Han explores the layers of identity amid a city of haves and have-nots. This is a coming-of-age-in-New-York story that explores the travails of love and working in finance against the backdrop of the Korean-American community in Queens.

Insomniac City by Bill Hayes

In Insomniac City, author Bill Hayes writes about moving from San Francisco to New York, where he fell in love with Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (the inspiration for Dr. Sayer portrayed by the late Robin Williams in the movie, “Awakenings”).

When even blissful romance didn’t cure Hayes’ insomnia, he took to walking around Greenwich Village at night with his camera. Insomniac City is his love letter to nocturnal New York—describing the characters he met, his life with Sacks, and the passersby he photographed.

Morningside Heights by Joshua Henkin

Morningside Heights, a novel by Joshua Henkin, traces the story of Spencer Robinson, a Columbia professor, and his wife, Pru Steiner, who works at Barnard, from their first meeting on campus and dates drinking bad coffee at Chock full o' Nuts (the New York coffee chain that existed long before Starbucks) to marriage and children and Robinson’s early onset dementia.

It is a loving tribute to family and life. The book is loosely based on the life of the author’s father, Louis Henkin, who taught at Columbia Law School for more than 50 years.

Morningside Heights by Cheryl Mendelson

Morningside Heights, the first of a trilogy by Cheryl Mendelson, is set in rapidly gentrifying Morningside Heights in the late 1990s. The cast of characters, which is made up of artists, musicians, and professors, live on 117^th Street, shop at local bookstores, and meet up at local cafes.

With her focus on domestic lives, alliances, and marriages, Mendelson, who has taught at both Columbia and Barnard, harkens back to Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen. This is the perfect escapist reading set in the community we love—and you will too.

The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick

The Odd Woman and the City, by Vivian Gornick, introduces the legendary feminist writer to a new, younger audience. In this memoir, Gornick walks around New York for hours each day and records the conversations she overhears, strikes up with strangers, and has with her friends.

As Gornick, who has been a visiting writer at Columbia’s School of the Arts, meanders around the city, she reflects on her childhood in the South Bronx and contemplates aging, the drama of life, and the restorative act of walking through New York. She writes, “nothing healed me of a sore and angry heart like a walk through the city.”

There Is Confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset

There Is Confusion, by Jessie Redmon Fauset, is a classic from the 1920s about the lives of three Black children who grow up, fall in love, and navigate a racist society. Redmon Fauset has also been compared to Jane Austen because of her examination of family life, marriage, and social dynamics.

The subway, Morningside Park, and the streets of Harlem are the backdrop. Reading this novel, it becomes clear how racism shaped the daily life of Black Americans, no matter how accomplished or respected. 

Wrestling With Moses by Anthony Flint

In Wrestling With Moses, author Anthony Flint, who graduated from Columbia’s School of Journalism, examines the journalist and urbanist Jane Jacobs, who fought master builder Robert Moses over his plans to destroy much of Greenwich Village and lower Manhattan.

Moses, the subject of Robert Caro’s three-volume biography, The Power Broker, shaped the design of modern New York City. A much shorter read than Caro’s, Flint’s book explains how much we have to thank Jacobs and the women of Greenwich Village.