Every story in New York begins with a doorman. Mine did. After all, doormen are the first people you see when you move into an apartment, if you have the money to live in a doorman building, or if you can fake it by renting a room from a nutjob who does.

My doorman was a schmuck, but I fell in love with him. He was a young, handsome man in uniform, opening doors for other women and old ladies, carrying their packages, smiling and asking how their day was. I thought he was the kind of gentleman that doesn’t exist anymore today, but then I realized all that jazz is just doorman schtick.

Charles LeDuff’s story also begins with a doorman. In the New York Times reporter’s book Work and Other Sins, the opening story is about a retiring New York City doorman.

I picked up LeDuff’s book because I’m attracted to all things New York. But more because I’m a graduate of the Ashcan School of Writing. I write and read about the New York City street life and the characters in the city. John McNulty, Joseph Mitchell, and Hubert Selby, Jr. captured these characters the way I hope I do in my writing and the way Charles LeDuff does in this book.

The book is divided into sections, some on firefighters and rescue workers following 9-11, some on odd characters, some on New Yorkers who hold odd jobs, some on the clashing cultures in the city. There’s an interesting story on the 85-year-old keeper of a lighthouse in Coney Island. Who knew there was a lighthouse in Coney Island? And who knew it had a keeper? Others are the last of the "baymen"—an eeler and a trapper. Then there’s the story of the man who changes the light bulb at the top of the Empire State Building. (I don’t envy this guy.) These stories read like Joseph Mitchell.

LeDuff interviews truck drivers and ironworkers who hauled debris—including bodies—from Ground Zero. One truck driver says, "They hit the World Trade Center. They hit the Pentagon. But they missed America." There are more stories of crews finding bodies of firefighters. These stories make me cry, and it is true that when you are present for something, it is reality, and you know it is possible and it can happen to you. These stories are good accounts for people who were not present in New York during the 9-11 attack and for those who were not present for the cleanup.

The book also talks about the importance of the bar in New York culture. The men go here after cleaning up Ground Zero. McNulty wrote bar stories. It is here that people unwind, become themselves, and the New York bar is like none anywhere I’ve ever been.

Perhaps what stands out more than New York in this book is the only section in the book not about New York--on his stint working in a slaughterhouse in the South—a series that won him a Pulitzer Prize. A story about race in America—in a little town that took my innocence, a town which I spent some forgettable years of my life, Lumberton, North Carolina. He talks about the four races—white, black, Indian, and Mexican. When I lived there, Mexicans hadn’t quite made their mark so there were only three races and as an Italian, I didn’t fit into any. LeDuff’s slaughterhouse experience mirrors my mother’s stint at a T-shirt factory that I think says less about race and more about socio-economic prejudice and the Southern "bossman" mentality.

This is the hardest part of the book for me to read because I remember the prejudice, and it was among all races with each other and I felt like an observer though I lived there, I was ignored because of my race. I was too weird to fit into the accepted three races and there weren’t enough Italians to make a fourth race. While I read about New York City from my bedroom in Lumberton, North Carolina, I wished this little town would implode, and I am happy to say that I got out of Lumberton, North Carolina.

The piece is well written, though I don’t think it represents race in America, not even race in the South. Lumberton, and Robeson County in North Carolina, is a unique racial experience, not a typical one. I think LeDuff would have to experience other Southern towns to know that. The piece, in my opinion, touches more on socio-economic prejudice and the need for labor reform.

Minus this piece, I love what LeDuff has done in this book. He has shown us that the New York that was loved in Mitchell’s day, though gritty and sad and lonely, is still alive today with the same cast of characters.