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Robert W. Snyder, "When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers" (Cornell UP, 2026)
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- [00:02]
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- [00:54]
Robert W. Snyder
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Jim Melchiore
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network and for the Gotham center for New York City History at the City University of New York. I'm one of your hosts, Jim Melchiore, and it's my honor today to be in conversation with Robert W. Snyder, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University. We're discussing his book, when the City Stopped Stories from New York's Essential Workers, published by Cornell University Press in 2025. And perhaps after hearing the phrase essential workers, you've already guessed that the subject matter of the book is COVID 19 with a focus on New York City. Rob, thank you so much for joining us for the podcast.
- [02:41]
Robert W. Snyder
Thank you.
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Jim Melchiore
Now, our obvious first question. How did you come to write this book?
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Robert W. Snyder
In 2019, I was appointed Manhattan Borough Historian. It's a post. It's a voluntary post that exists under the laws of the State of New York. And I Was wondering how I could make use of the post in a useful way. And then a few months later, the COVID 19 pandemic began to erupt. And I knew nothing about epidemics. I knew nothing about viruses. So I started to create a list of historians who could give me advice when journalists called me with questions. At the top of the list were David Rosner, who just passed away, unfortunately, and Janet golden, who at the time had just retired from Rutgers University. Both of them were experts on public health. So I started talking to them and then gradually, working with the Gotham center for New York City History at the City University, put together a zoom that brought together historians, archivists, documentarians, folklorists to talk with each other online because we were under lockdown about how we would respond to the pandemic. And we helped each other. We gave each other advice. And out of those conversations, I finally emerged with the idea that I should edit a book that would put together, between two covers, samples of the interviews and photographs and poetry that were collected during the pandemic.
- [04:09]
Jim Melchiore
So did you see this project as part of your responsibility as Manhattan borough historian?
- [04:15]
Robert W. Snyder
I thought it was the best way that I could make use of my office. I really wanted to leave behind something that future generations could benefit from. I thought that it was very clear early on in the pandemic that this was going to be an episode of historic proportions. And I wanted to make sure, as Manhattan borough historian, that when future generations looked back on this episode, they had a sense of what it was like to live through it from the bottom up.
- [04:42]
Jim Melchiore
You know, for those of us who did live through it, I'm kind of curious, and maybe you don't know the exact date, but at what point did you get involved? Was it during that really intense period in late March and early April? Was it later in the spring? Do you recall?
- [04:56]
Robert W. Snyder
I started thinking about what to do in late March and early April. I remember that because an event that I had planned, a A citywide New York City History Day conference, had to be canceled. I knew we were not going to be meeting in public, and I started talking to people online. But I don't think our first meetings came until much later. I'm going to say May, maybe even June, that we had these big gatherings that brought people together.
- [05:24]
Jim Melchiore
You know, this book is not a classic history with lots of statistics and quotes from mayors and governors and senators. I believe you actually include the words of 45 people in the book. No names, honestly, that people would necessarily recognize. So how did you determine who got
- [05:44]
Robert W. Snyder
in That's a great question. I decided early on that it was too early to write a history of the pandemic. We didn't know its full effects. We didn't understand the processes that it set off. So I didn't want to write a conventional analytical history of it. I just thought it was way too early to register all that. At the same time, I thought that some people were being heard from a lot. You heard from the President of the United States, you heard from the mayor of New York City, you heard from the Governor of New York State. Their voices were amplified in all sorts of ways. But what you didn't hear from often was the people who were out suffering, coping, and most important, from my perspective, doing the work of keeping the city running during the pandemic. So I made a promise to myself that I would get into the record for posterity the voices of people who went out and worked and kept the city running in a very difficult time
- [06:43]
Jim Melchiore
in New York City. It's true that we tend to live our lives in public spaces. And what I think your book presents is the fact that although many people were able to to stay inside and work from home, there are thousands more than thousands who had to continue to live their lives in public and they were quite vulnerable. Right.
- [07:09]
Robert W. Snyder
One of the things that really spurred me to do this book was the situation of transit workers. My grandfather was a transit worker. I actually did a book about transit workers called Transit Talk, grounded in oral history interviews. And I was angered early in the pandemic to see in a report in the New York Times that transit workers knew they were in danger, ask the transit authority for help in protecting themselves from the virus, and got told, don't wear masks, it'll frighten the customers. At that point, I went ballistic. And I said, I've got to get the experiences of transit workers into the record alongside other folks as well. And it's tragic. More than 130 transit workers died. And I made a point of putting the voices of transit workers into the book so that people would understand what they were going through.
- [08:01]
Jim Melchiore
Speaking of transit workers, one of the statistics in your book that was striking to me, 41 transit workers had died by April 7th. April 7th was very early, considering the fact that I think we didn't shut down until around maybe the 15th of March. But to have that many already dead by April 7th really does point up the tremendous vulnerability.
- [08:28]
Robert W. Snyder
And that's a fraction of the transit workers who died overall. Right. It's more than triple that by the time the pandemic was over.
- [08:38]
Jim Melchiore
There's so many stories, and we might talk a little bit about favorite stories, but while we're on the subject of. Of transit workers, I think one of the really powerful voices in your book is Veronica Fletcher, who speaks throughout the book, at different stages of the book about her late husband, Joseph Trevor Fletcher, a transit worker.
- [09:02]
Robert W. Snyder
Yeah, I found veronica through Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union. She had made some early statements that were covered in the news media about losing her husband. She was ready and willing to talk about her experiences. And I interviewed her, and she was heroic in the way she was willing to speak candidly and with tremendous emotion about the process of her life and then death with her husband Trevor. And. And at one point in the interview, she started to cry. And then I started to cry, and I said, you want to stop this? I mean, I've done a lot of interviews. This is the only time in my life that I ever started to cry during an interview. And she said, no, no, we've got to do this. And I thought to myself, okay, if she can do it, then I can do it. And we went through it and we completed the interview. And afterwards I told her something that I really believe that in a time when many lives are lost, it's hard to imagine them one by one. And that in telling the story of Trevor's life and tragic death, she had put a name in a Face and a Family on one of the losses of COVID And that I hoped that when future generations read this, they would start to understand the depth of loss that people experienced. It reminded me of what people said about the Jones and the Great Depression in the. In the novel the Grapes of Wrath, that suddenly it put names, faces on what had been statistics up to them. One thing that happened in the course of selecting interviews, that some of the interviews were conducted relatively early in the pandemic, I think around about May. And those were interviews conducted by students at Fordham University. As the pandemic rolled on, I did interviews of my own with people who lived through the pandemic, Veronica Fletcher being one of them. So in choosing interviews for the book, I had a large number of interviews that were conducted in an early phase of the pandemic, when I doubled back to fill holes in all the interviews that I had then. I was working in, oh, I think 2022, 2023. Then I could talk to people who had the experience of living through the whole thing. And I decided in conversation with my editor that we would do is. Is break up those longer interviews. That covered the entirety of the pandemic and spread them throughout the book. So at least a few of the people you meet in this book would carry you through the entire experience.
- [11:44]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah, I don't. Do you have any favorite stories from the books?
- [11:49]
Robert W. Snyder
It's really tough. Veronica Fletcher's is surely one of my favorites, but I also have never read it aloud to people. It's so personal, it's so loving. I just couldn't do it justice. Right. There are others in there that mean a lot to me. I love Ron Colm's poem about seeing a rescue on the subway track during the middle of the pandemic. I have great feelings about police officer Richard Reyes interview about how he looked out for his police officers to keep them safe while they serve the public during the pandemic. I love an interview with a young. It's really a first person narrative with a young woman of Bangladeshi ancestry about how she copes with the pandemic and the fact that her mother is an essential worker. It's very hard for you to pick out one and very hard for me to pick out one.
- [12:46]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah. But you know, it's. What is very strong about it is that some of it is so very ordinary. You know, Simon Rener, I think of Italian chief in a survivor of 9 11, by the way. And I think he was a battalion chief in Brooklyn. And he just basically goes. He picks one day in early April when we were at the height of. Of. Of COVID and the height of the deaths. And he just basically tells us about hour by hour a day in the life. And there's something that's so ordinary about that that the ordinary becomes powerful.
- [13:26]
Robert W. Snyder
I think so too. Simon Resner's piece is really, I think, a wonderful contribution to the book. And it was put together by the journalism organization ProPublica. They engaged him to keep a 24 hour journal during the darkest days of the pandemic. And he did that. And I had permission to reprint that as long as I reprinted it in its entirety. And I was glad to do that because it does take you through a day in the life of a firefighter. And what impressed me about that was he, throughout his reminiscences draws on all of his experiences as a firefighter. He goes back to his earliest days. And you could see how in getting through this ordeal he drew on a lifetime of experience in the New York City Fire Department. And I think a lot of people had to do that to get through the pandemic. But particularly those frontline workers who had to go out and do the kind of work that he did.
- [14:19]
Jim Melchiore
You mentioned the police chief. I believe he was in a precinct in the Bronx.
- [14:23]
Robert W. Snyder
Yes, Richard Brea. Exactly.
- [14:24]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah. And he talked about how it was he had to build solidarity amongst his own. His own men and women, his own officers, and how sometimes it was challenging, depending on the age that they were in, that generationally, people saw, especially the early days of COVID differently. Anything more you want to say about.
- [14:48]
Robert W. Snyder
I was struck by two things that he did. The first thing was he appealed to police officers, sense of professionalism. A lot of police officers, he said, did not want to go into households where someone had died of COVID But he said, this is no different than a gun job. You get a call that there's a firearms incident at a location, you go there right away. You can't hesitate. And he showed that kind of resolve, and I think he inspired that in his men. He also talked about how he tried to lead by example. Guys didn't want to wear masks. He put on a mask, and he went into places where people were suffering and he helped them.
- [15:22]
Jim Melchiore
Right. Or he would say to one of his officers, where's your mask? I don't. Well, here's one. I have one for you. Put it on. Yeah, that. That kind of leading by example, you interviewed some medical personnel who had to deal with the triaging during the worst days of the pandemic and actually deciding who gets dialysis and maybe in some cases, who gets a ventilator. Very real.
- [15:52]
Robert W. Snyder
These were some of the interviews that were conducted at Columbia University by the oral history project there. They interviewed a lot of medical professionals, doctors, nurses, researchers. And two things came through in that. One was, again, the tremendous sense of socially conscious professionalism that doctors and nurses brought to Covid and that sustained them during this. But also a sense that the conditions they were working under were not what they had been trained to expect, that there were shortages of supplies. And sometimes these meant that you had to triage people and limit their care to spread the care around. And this was just not what doctors and nurses had been trained to do. So it was very, very hard on them. The other thing, in those interviews, there's a interview with one man who's a medical researcher, Stephen Palmer, and he talks about the gallows humor that sustained medical professionals. And I. I went back and I did an interview of my own with him because it came up in passing with his interview for Columbia, and I wanted him to elaborate on it. Most of the interviews that I discovered or conducted, the people were sometimes grim and they were sometimes saintly. And I thought that was a reasonable range of responses. But what Stephen said is that medical professionals know that to sustain themselves in a crisis, they sometimes resort to a very grim kind of humor. And he want talk about that. And I thought that was refreshingly honest and really useful to get in. So I interviewed him, and he spoke about it. He recounted one episode for me in which early in the pandemic, he had to take a blood test from a patient who was in isolation. So he gets to the door of the room where this patient is isolated, and he's wearing his hospital id, and he turns to his colleague who's going to help him on this blood test, and he says, here's my dog tags. And he takes off his hospital id, hands them to his colleague and says, give them to my kids. And it's like a line straight out of the kind of World War II movie that I grew up with. Right. And he's cracking up, and he's laughing as he. As he recounts this to me. And I'm laughing as I hear it, but it helped me understand how humor helped people get through a very difficult situation.
- [18:21]
Jim Melchiore
Right. A couple more observations with regard to the stories and the people who told you the stories. There was a really, I thought, powerful interview with a high school senior, a girl who was living with her mother in a shelter. And what was, what. What got me was the fact that she was being taken away from the only social life that she had. You know, her. Her high school classmates were really her life, and all of a sudden, no school, and you're. You're stuck in a shelter. That. That was a perspective that I thought was really good to include in the book.
- [19:06]
Robert W. Snyder
Well, thank you. I mean, you know, that was part of a project at Pace University High School on the Lower east side, and they got it. So much important work done by high school students and, And. And this young woman, for her, going to school was a lifeline. It got her out of the shelter. It. It got her out among friends and supportive teachers. And I was deeply touched at how one of the teachers or staff at her school actually brought her a laptop so that she could dial into school while she was in isolation.
- [19:36]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah. The other one that came comes to mind is I think her name. Soumya.
- [19:41]
Robert W. Snyder
Yeah. Yeah.
- [19:42]
Jim Melchiore
And, you know, she tells the story. She's a Muslim, and she tells the story of how her mother would always say, don't forget to say your prayers. Don't forget to say your prayers. And she says, you Know, honestly, I don't often say my prayers. But then she constructs this prayer. She says, allah, I'm not going to ask you to do something big like end the pandemic. All I want you to do is keep my mother safe. You know, it's.
- [20:08]
Robert W. Snyder
It's a. I found that interview so moving because it testifies to the fact that Samia is just an American kid. Right. Who has with her mother the same issues that many teenagers have with her parents. Right. And I actually taught that interview in a class at SUNY Oneonta when I was a visitor there one day. And one of the thoughts that came to our minds in the discussion of that interview was that by the end of her narration, what Samia is saying is she took it on herself to try to save her mother. And she also feared that if her mother didn't get saved, it might have been her own fault that she didn't pray hard enough. So she went out with special fervor and intention. And I found that very moving.
- [20:53]
Jim Melchiore
Yes. Well, we cannot possibly talk about all 45 of the people who are in the book, but certainly we would recommend that you read the book because the stories are very powerful. Now, let's widen out the lens a little bit. You know, New York City historically has had a pretty good reputation for having a very good public health system, which, quite honestly, is not common in the United States. Historically hasn't been common. But I'm wondering, looking back now, and you've certainly been a student of New York City history, was the public health system overrated?
- [21:33]
Robert W. Snyder
It's a good question. I don't think we made the best possible use of the public health system. Right. I think that the strengths of the public health system were undermined by other inequalities in the city. And, you know, the access that you got to medical care in part depended on the zip code you lived in and how much money you made. And I knew those kind of inequalities were embedded in New York City in recent decades, but it deeply troubled me that the inequalities in the city so powerfully leached into our ability to care for each other during the pandemic. I also kept in touch with a couple people in public health throughout the pandemic. And from their perspective, the problem was they were simply not being listened to enough. I mean, in their minds, they had trained for this all their lives, and they were not getting to employ the remedies and responses that they thought would be most effective. There have been some books that have come out since the pandemic, arguing that the perspective of public health officials got too much attention. I know that public health people would push back against that vigorously. Particularly in New York City in the days of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, they did not feel like they were running roughshod over the city. They felt that they were making difficult decisions in uncertain circumstances where doing nothing and doing everything seemed impossible. So they tried to come down somewhere in between, and the results were uneven, but they felt that at the time, they were the best they could do in retrospect. Obviously, there are things that need to be learned so we don't repeat this again.
- [23:16]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah. And maybe to go a little bit deeper into the inequalities, you know, it was documented that communities of color, especially black and Latino communities, were being harder hit, both in terms of sickness and in terms of death. And yet I'm wondering, those kind of inequalities are so baked in, aren't they, that even a good public health system has to deal with that. Was that something that you were able to explore in the book?
- [23:47]
Robert W. Snyder
I could get to was part of my attempt to put the interviews and the experiences of the pandemic in context. I didn't get to analyze it in the kind of detail you would get in a full history of the pandemic. This is really an oral history. But I was struck by a thought that came through from books that I had read about Hurricane Katrina. And a phrase that emerges from that episode is that there are no natural disasters. There are events of nature, but what makes them disastrous is often human actions leading up to those events in nature. So in New York City, we got hit by the COVID 19 virus because we are an international city that's plugged into international networks of transport. A virus could cross the world on one flight. We're vulnerable in that way. But at the same time, the medical system we've created in New York City with private hospitals and public hospitals, has inequalities that are part of it. Other inequalities in the city are how we live. People who live in multi generational households, because the rents are so high, are at much greater risk of seeing the pandemic spread through their family, their building, and their community. These kinds of things are part of the fabric of our city. We've got to deal with them. I was struck how in the recent mayoral campaign, there was a lot of discussion of affordable housing, but I thought not enough discussion about how the pandemic revealed how overcrowded housing can lead to public health disasters.
- [25:25]
Jim Melchiore
Another vulnerable group that you were able to spotlight in the book. And I think a very important addition to the book are the delivery people and the way that they had to continue to work under the pressure of what they call the apps. That's something that maybe a lot of people had not thought of.
- [25:51]
Robert W. Snyder
No, because so many people get takeout food delivered by workers who are at best an abstraction to them, that they never think about the working conditions of those deliveristas who bring packages of food to apartment doors. And I was just dumbstruck at how hard their lives were, at how exploited they felt. I had an idea of this going into it, but I think that interview brought it to light. I was furious that they were not allowed to use the bathrooms of the restaurants they delivered for. I mean, come on, you owe something to the workers. Go out and bring your food to people so you can make money preparing food.
- [26:31]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah, there was something kind of ironic in that, because one of the things that was mentioned a lot in the early days to everyone was support your local restaurants, Order takeout, order takeout. And you think, oh, I'm doing a good thing. But forgetting that there is some inequality and injustice going on in terms of how it's getting delivered to you.
- [26:53]
Robert W. Snyder
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
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Jim Melchiore
Now, in terms of the vaccine, kind of incredible how quickly the vaccine was produced. I think the first inoculation happened in December of 2020. How did the vaccine affect what you were documenting in terms of people's thoughts?
- [27:19]
Robert W. Snyder
That's a great question, because as I tried to organize the book, I was always trying to reconcile two things. The chronology of the pandemic and big themes in the pandemic. And a lot of the interviews were conducted in the late spring and summer of 2020, but there were some that were conducted afterwards. Certainly the interviews that I conducted came well after the introduction of the vaccine. And what I noticed is that once the vaccine came in, the vaccine itself began to become something of an issue. And once the vaccine seemed to reduce the danger of the pandemic, all sorts of other things came into play. People were worried about social distancing. People complied in different degrees with social distancing and masking. So that once the. The terrible risk of the early days of the pandemic was reduced by vaccines, the vaccines and public health measures started to become the issues. And those days after the vaccine turned out to be more contentious, and I would say sour, that's the word I would use for them than they had been before that. I remember the spring of 2020 as a time of tremendous solidarity. I remember hearing people clap in the windows at night at 7pm for essential workers, especially the medical workers. I remember people clapping and just recognizing their neighbors across the street, you know, and sort of affirming our presence and our common bonds. But, you know, that all eventually died. And there was a kind of bitterness, I think, that suffused later days in the pandemic. And it's important to recognize all of these phases if we're going to figure out what we went through and what we can learn from it.
- [29:09]
Jim Melchiore
You covered as you needed to the killing of George Floyd, which was certainly a major part of the story of the pandemic in the spring and summer. Well, from May 25, when he was killed, throughout the summer of 2020 in New York City. How did that play out in terms of. Of what you were hearing from people?
- [29:33]
Robert W. Snyder
So the killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed, it accelerated our return from lockdown. There were demonstrations all through the streets ahead of where people had expected them to be. We were about to go into a kind of phased recovery from the weeks of lockdown, and it pushed people back out into the streets more. I think it gave some people an opportunity to vent anger that had been brewing throughout the pandemic. And it made some folks angry to see demonstrations going on at the same time. So at one hand, I think the demonstrations generated a tremendous sense of solidarity among their participants. But I think in some cases, people who watch them from afar were askance. And I think that combination contributed to the mixed emotions that many people felt coming out of the pandemic.
- [30:32]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah, it's interesting that you talk about the significant solidarity that was evidenced in the spring of 2020, especially in New York City, with the banging of the pots and pans and the cheering every night at seven o', clock. And then the demonstrations in response to the killing of George Floyd. Understandable of. And then, as you point out, the vaccine, those were different forces that actually did sort of chip away at that solidarity.
- [31:07]
Robert W. Snyder
Yeah, I think there was also some looting. Right. The morning after the looting in soho, I jumped on a bicycle and I rode down to soho and looked around, and I wasn't thrilled at what I saw. I mean, everybody sees things differently. A lot of stores were boarded up. A lot of those stores were turned to artwork in which people painted or drew on the boarded up stores and tried to convert the boarded up stores into works of art. And that was kind of interesting the way they did that. But there was also some straight up looting. And I Was more troubled by the looting than anything else. And when that looting in soho was followed up by looting on Fordham road in the Bronx, There was great concern in upper Manhattan that something like that might happen on Dyckman street in Washington Heights and Inwood. And it was a reminder to me that as New Yorkers emerged from the pandemic, There were divisions and angers that had been brewing for quite a while that were suddenly getting the oxygen of the return to public life. And that, I think, made for a combustible situation. I was glad to see that there was not a major episode of violence in northern Manhattan, but troubled to see how on Fordham road the people who were being looted Were just mom and pop stores that were not guilty of anything. I mean, you say what you want about the big stores that were looted in soho, I don't think it was a wise idea to loot anybody's store. But the stores that were looted on Fordham road Were mom and pop stores that would have great trouble recovering from that.
- [32:41]
Jim Melchiore
Yeah, I suppose an obvious question to ask an author of a book like this is, what was your personal experience? How did you ride out the pandemic in New York City?
- [32:53]
Robert W. Snyder
I'm a white collar worker. I hid in my apartment. I did not face great danger like the people who went out and ran subways, Punched cash registers, or delivered food. I hid as best as I could. I shopped at odd hours. My children brought food to my wife and me so we could shop in public as little as possible. I walked late at night when there were very few people around. I felt better walking late at night, Although I quickly discovered that late at night I could hear the sirens even more clearly, and thus I knew how many people were being brought to Mount Sinai hospital. I stayed out of harm's way. I didn't feel like any kind of hero, that's for sure. I was staying at home to stay safe. It was my wife who reminded me that those of us who stayed home and hid out or went to country houses to escape the contagion Were doing something useful. We were staying out of emergency rooms. She said, our job is to not get infected so that we do not have to go to an emergency room. The emergency rooms are under terrible stress because they've got so many people showing up. Our job is to stay out of the emergency room and diminish the overcrowding that's going on there. That's what we did.
- [34:10]
Jim Melchiore
Was there a moment for you personally that sort of perhaps the most recognized or the most memorable? I don't mean memorable, necessarily, in a positive way. Instance or day or moment of COVID in New York City.
- [34:28]
Robert W. Snyder
Memory is always tricky, but the way I remember it is that there was one night in April where I got two pieces of news that just broke my heart. And one was that John Prine had died. I have long been a big fan of John Prine, the songwriter, because I think he has a great grasp of the best and worst in life and finds a way to sort of laugh at pain and tragedy in ways that make them bearable. But at the same night that I learned that John Prine had died, I learned that a large number of people had died in a nursing home in upper Manhattan. And that, to me, was just the Isabella home. And that was just too much to bear. At that point. It felt like the most distant points in my life and the closest points in my life were all converging. And it was one big firestorm that had swept up people far and near. And that really bothered me a lot.
- [35:22]
Jim Melchiore
The book has not only the recollections of ordinary people, 45 people who are not famous, but who basically helped to support the city through the pandemic. There's also some really good pictures, some really good photographs in the book. And a couple of it struck me. One, of course, is the way people came together in mutual aid with refrigerators around the city. Anything you have to say about that?
- [35:53]
Robert W. Snyder
One of the great things about the pandemic was how people did put together mutual aid projects, like the shared refrigerators that people would stock with food, like collecting food to distribute to people. There's all sorts of good work done in this way. I think of Dave Crenshaw in Upper Manhattan. He had done a lot of work for youth and trying to make his community a healthier place during the years of high crime and the crack epidemic. He built lots of networks doing that kind of work in the 80s and 90s. He returned to those networks during COVID to help get food distributed to senior citizens and later to help them get vaccinated. And I was impressed by how he drew on those old networks in new circumstances to help people get through this crisis. I also felt that in looking at this whole episode, that's what many people did. They drew on sources of strength and human connections that they had to get through this new danger.
- [36:55]
Jim Melchiore
You have an important statistic in the book. In the four years, four years and three months between March 2020 and June of 2024, New York City lost 46,426 lives to Covid and you quote a sociologist, Paul Starr. And the quote is this the American response to COVID 19 has encapsulated an era when a nation that always thought of itself as a success has had to confront the possibility that its luck had run out. And you say that that could apply as well to New York City. Looking back now a couple of years, would you still agree with your comment at that time?
- [37:41]
Robert W. Snyder
I would because there are a couple ways in which I think we were too slow to recognize the danger of the pandemic, too certain that the existing health system would serve everybody equally well, understandably confused by when and how we should recover. So I would still stand by that quote. I also remember talking to a friend from Ireland who said something that really made me sad, who said that. You must understand that. She said that people overseas have looked at the United States in many ways with admiration, with envy, with criticisms, with concern, but they've never pitied the country. But in the midst of the COVID pandemic, when the response seemed so uneven, so flawed, we just looked pitiful and that didn't have to be. And that really bothered me a lot. And I still think that's the case.
- [38:35]
Jim Melchiore
One of the themes in the book, perhaps the theme of the book, and you talk about it early in the book, but it's a quote that I have to, I have to present to you right now. You say the city was saved from the bottom up.
- [38:48]
Robert W. Snyder
Yeah, I agree with that. It was essential workers who figured out what to do, who did their jobs in the face of all sorts of obstacles that kept trains running, that kept buses running, that kept grocery stores open, that kept pharmacies open. These were the essential institutions that we needed to have running if we were going to get through this. And there were all sorts of flubs and flusters and mistaken moves up top. I would judge most of these with some charity, but I would judge the work of working people who went out and faced this challenge with the greatest of admiration. You didn't have a choice in a lot of cases. Right. But in so many of these cases, the essential workers, the frontline workers, went out were people who had not prepared for anything like this. You're a police officer, you're a firefighter. You know that at some point in your career, you're going to have to face danger. But that's not what you think about if you're going to be a supermarket cashier or if you're going to work on the staff of a pharmacy. You don't think it's going to be dangerous ever. But suddenly jobs like that bec became dangerous and people did them anyway.
- [40:01]
Jim Melchiore
Yes, this is a book which is very valuable not only for the factual information, but of course the personal insights which transported me and I think to any reader back to the weeks and the months, especially 2020 and 2021. And I suspect that it will be even more important in the future as generations who did not experience Covid firsthand can read about it and we would hope perhaps learn from it what went wrong and also from what was done correctly. Again, the book is when the City Stopped Stories from New York's Essential Workers by Robert W. Snyder, published by Cornell University Press. Thank you so much for your time.
- [40:44]
Robert W. Snyder
Thank you, Jim.
- [40:45]
New Books Network Host
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- [41:20]
Robert W. Snyder
Sam.