This well-written and sumptuously illustrated book is filled with surprises that add texture and richness to life in the Big Apple. Wild peacocks, parrots, and raccoons rather than the Bronx Zoo; cricket, lawn bowling, surfboarding, and pistol shooting rather than the Yankees and the Mets; a Japanese pagoda-inspired house and a Frank Lloyd Wright house rather than a Brooklyn brownstone or the Empire State building; wineries, rolling ladder...