Overview

Winner of the New York City Book Award From the beloved author of Insomniac City, a poignant and profound tribute in stories and images to a city amidst a pandemic. A bookstore where readers shout their orders from the street. A neighborhood restaurant turned to-go place where one has a shared drink--on either end of a bar--with the owner. These scenes, among many others, became the new normal as soon as the world began to face the COVID-19 pandemic. In How We Live Now, author and photographer Bill Hayes offers an ode to our shared humanity--capturing in real time this strange new world we’re now in (for who knows how long?) with his signature insight and grace. As he wanders the increasingly empty streets of Manhattan, Hayes meets fellow New Yorkers and discovers stories to tell, but he also shares the unexpected moments of gratitude he finds from within his apartment, where he lives alone and--like everyone else--is staying home, trying to keep busy and not bored as he adjusts to enforced solitude with reading, cooking, reconnecting with loved ones, reflecting on the past--and writing. Featuring Hayes’s inimitable street photographs, How We Live Now chronicles an unimaginable moment in time, offering a long-lasting reminder that what will get us through this unprecedented, deadly crisis is each other.

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9781635576887

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Reviews

Bill Hayes has unwrapped a New York under wraps during the lockdown. He is, in his photos and writings, the great poet of the everyday. * Edmund White * A touching volume . . . The photos serve as potent documentation of an unprecedented time. * Kirkus Reviews * [A] loving tribute to Sacks and to New York . . . Frank, beautiful, bewitching-[Hayes's photographs] unmask their subjects' best and truest selves. * Jennifer Senior, New York Times on INSOMNIAC CITY * Poetic and profound . . . A lyrical reminder that happiness and heartache are inseparably entwined . . . Insomniac City is an ineffably splendid read in its entirety, a mighty packet of pure aliveness. * Maria Popova, Brain Pickings on INSOMNIAC CITY * Like Patti Smith's haunting M Train, Hayes' book weaves seemingly disparate threads of memory into a kind of sanctuary . . . where one can shake off the treasured relics of past lives and prepare to be reborn anew. * San Francisco Chronicle on INSOMNIAC CITY * Insomniac City is resoundingly about life--about being wide awake to possibility, to the beauty of every fleeting moment. * Oprah.com on INSOMNIAC CITY *

Author Information

Bill Hayes is the author of Insomniac City and The Anatomist, among other books, and a forthcoming history of exercise, Sweat, to be published by Bloomsbury. Hayes is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. A collection of his street photography, How New York Breaks Your Heart, was published recently by Bloomsbury. Hayes has completed the screenplay for a film adaptation of Insomniac City, currently in the works from Hopscotch Features, and he is also a co-editor of Oliver Sacks's posthumous books. He lives in New York. Visit his website at billhayes.com

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