Jacob A Riis

A classic early example of "muck-racking" journalism, or reporting by reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt, "How the Other Half Lives" is a chronicle of the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York endured at the end of the 19th century. Danish immigrant Jacob A. Riis saw first-hand the horrible conditions of the Lower East Side of Manhattan following his immigration...

"The Battle with the Slum," an arresting account of New York City's blighted areas. His exploration of the squalor found in Lower East Side tenements was groundbreaking. In the 1880's, up to 335,000 people lived within one square mile, making it the most densely populated place on earth. 10 to 15 persons occupied one room, creating rampant disease, hunger, and crime. By writing such captivating reportage on the conditions, public attention eventually...

Jacob Riis was one of the very few men who photographed the slums of New York at the turn of the century, when as many as 300,000 people per square mile were crowded into the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. The filth and degradation made the area a hell for the immigrants forced to live there. Riis was one of those immigrants, and, after years of abject poverty, when he became a police reporter for the New York Tribune, he exposed the shameful...