Eric Homberger explores the contribution New York has made to American history and culture. Birthplace to Herman Melville, Henry James and Joseph Heller, and adopted home of many other playwrights, artists and radicals, New York has been relentless in overturning cultural conventions. New York is: a city of power - Wall Street and the heart of US capitalism, the UN and global politics; a city of ambition - Ellis Island and the eternal migrant dream; a city of drama, art and music - Broadway, Tin Pan alley, museums, orchestras, and popular music; and a city of writers and visionaries - emigre intellectuals, novelists and poets, and chroniclers of urban life and voices of the dispossessed.