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When the City Stopped: When the City Stopped

When the City Stopped
When the City Stopped

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Notes

table of contents
  1. Editor’s Note
  2. Introduction
  3. 1 Early Days, Winter 2020
    1. Fear, Hygiene, and Teaching
    2. The Angel of Death over Italy
    3. Looming Threats to Transit Workers
    4. The Start of a Pandemic
    5. A Weird State
    6. Early Morning Fog
    7. Worrying for the City
    8. The Sirens
    9. Lamb’s Blood
  4. 2 Working for the Public’s Health, Spring 2020
    1. “Dead on Arrival”
    2. Into the Storm
    3. Challenging Times
    4. On the Frontlines of COVID-19, Echoes of AIDS
    5. At the Gates of Hell
    6. It Was Not Business as Usual
    7. Hard Choices
    8. Coping with Gallows Humor
  5. 3 Work Turned Upside Down, Spring to Fall 2020
    1. Forgotten Frontline Workers
    2. We Have to Help Each Other
    3. More than a Cashier
    4. At Home in the Bronx, At Work in Midtown Manhattan
    5. Frontline Workers in a Restaurant
    6. Working for the Apps
    7. Lessons, Survival, and a Public School Teacher
    8. In the Cloud: New York, December 2020
    9. Inside and Outside
    10. A Horror Story with a Happy Ending
  6. 4 Losses, Spring 2020
    1. Changes to 4 Train
    2. Afraid to Go Out
    3. Quarantined and Unemployed in the Bronx
    4. Saying Farewell
    5. Living in a Shelter in the First Year of the Pandemic
    6. Grief Works from Home at All Hours
    7. The Second Father: A Tribute
    8. He Was the Block’s Papa
  7. 5 Coping, Spring 2020
    1. No Opera Now
    2. Embracing Solitude
    3. A Prayer for My Mother
    4. Sharing Stories
    5. A Subway Story in the Time of COVID-19
    6. Making Masks, Whatever It Takes
    7. Working and Surviving
    8. Sustaining Community
    9. Building Bonds
    10. Organizing
    11. Clap Because You Care
  8. 6 Opening Up, Summer and Fall 2020
    1. New York to across Africa
    2. From Lockdown to Curfew
    3. Protests, Riots, and Retirement
    4. Broken Systems
    5. Opening Up
    6. “I’d Like to Think I’m an Optimist”
    7. Discrepancies
    8. After the Surge
    9. Drawn-Out Deaths
    10. Anticipating Vaccines
    11. Have Faith and Fight
    12. The Best Place to Be
  9. 7 Vaccines and After, 2021
    1. Registration Nightmares and Vaccine Skepticism
    2. The Second Shot: New York, February 2021
    3. A Question of Trade-offs
    4. Slogging Along
    5. Changes and Challenges
    6. Lexicon of the Pandemic
    7. Eating Bitterness
    8. The Island of Pandemica
  10. 8 Reflections, 2023
    1. Learning How to Talk to People
    2. Strength in the Long Run
    3. “We Were Here”
    4. Remembering Sacrifices and Losses
    5. The Momentum and Tumult of Discovery
    6. “Look Out for Each Other”
  11. Conclusion
  12. Acknowledgments
  13. Notes
  14. Contributors
  15. Index

Copyright © 2025 by Robert W. Snyder

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2025 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Snyder, Robert W., 1955– author.

Title: When the city stopped : stories from New York’s essential workers / Robert W. Snyder.

Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2025. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024028893 (print) | LCCN 2024028894 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501780387 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501780400 (epub) | ISBN 9781501780394 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020—New York (State)–New York. | COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020—Social aspects–New York (State)–New York. | LCGFT: Personal narratives.

Classification: LCC RA644.C67 S6224 2025 (print) | LCC RA644.C67 (ebook) | DDC 616.2/41440097471–dc23/eng/20240904

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024028893

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024028894

Cover image: Michael Krinke / Alamy Stock Photo.

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