In this original study, Peter Brooker takes issue with the simplified opposition of postmodernism to modernism in accounts of the modern period. Instead, he follows the course of modernity in the spectacular example of New York, to reveal the complexities of both modernist and postmodern responses to the city. Brooker's study refers us to the fiction of Doctorow, Don DeLillo and Toni Morrison and especially to the new urban ‘ethnic' writing. Here the voice of creative dissent and cultural hybridity expresses the best in a tradition of Amerian newness; this Peter Brooker calls the ‘new modern'. The text is an important contribution to contemporary debates on modernism and postmodernism, providing a thorough interdisciplinary study of new American writing within the socio-economic context of New York City and will be of great interest to students of American Studies, Cultural Studies and Literature.