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I traveled to New York recently; and as an addition to my map-including tourist guide, I brought this book with me across the Atlantic. After all, fiction often serves as the best travel.

This is a beautiful short story collection that both highlights the glamour and glitter of New York ball rooms, the alluring promise of wealth and fame � along with the crimes, the failures and disappointments. It's incredibly well-rounded.

I highly enjoyed Edith Wharton's elegant musings, James Baldwin's touching portrait of a musician dealing with drug abuse and John Cheever's brilliantly ironic tale of a family that seeks fortune and fame.

This was the perfect book to read in preparation for a city that's impossible to imagine beforehand.