How did the book come about, and what was the biggest challenge in putting it together?
One of the questions we often get asked on tours is, “Where can I read about all the great things I’ve just seen?” And while we’re happy to provide off-the-cuff bibliographies of books and articles for further study, most people who ask that question are really hoping we’ll recommend one good, concise history of the city. Since we didn’t think that book existed, we decided to write it ourselves. Moreover, we wanted a book that reflected our specialty as tour guides, so every story or vignette in Inside the Apple is tied to a place you can visit. The biggest challenge the book presented was to make sure that we were getting all our facts straight. We pride ourselves on giving tours that are pretty rigorously researched, but even so it can be easy when presenting information orally to forget a date or mix up a story. We wanted to make sure before committing these tales to print that we had done due diligence and verified everything. We also didn’t want to simply repeat pieces of conventi
