By Aspen Matis

Columbia University psychiatry professor Galina Mindlin, MD, PhD, studies neuron connections and how such brain links can be strengthened by listening to the right music. Her new book, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life (co-authored by Joseph Cardillo and Don DuRousseau), distills her brain-training findings into playlists for the mood you want to be in.

Our Town spoke with Mindlin about music’s potential to alter mood, productivity and happiness, the existence of side-effect-free medicine and the North Pole’s hold on her mind.
Our Town: We’ve all resolved to be better versions of ourselves in 2012. What role can music play in that resolution?
Galina Mindlin: Positive stimuli affect the brain in a positive way. You can use music as positive stimuli to improve your mood or relieve stress. First, you choose the piece you like and you think of the mind-state you desire. For instance: Do you want to relax, study, get motivated, focus—think first about what you want. Second, you really need to practice, play and play the piece, so your brain will remember it. Your brain is like a muscle.

What if I get sick of the song?
Then you have to leave it for a while, find something else. Stop playing it. Start gently replacing it with something else. Encourage your brain to withdraw from it.

What’s the value of playing the same song again and again?
To train the brain, help the cells forge more connections. But then you do have to update your playlist. Our brains respond to variation.

If you really want to train your mind, you have to stimulate your brain in unpredictable ways—unpredictable frequencies. You want to check the beats per minute—you want to synchronize your brain waves with those of the music, the beats per minute. You become your own boss with this prescription. We can practice personalized medicine.

Do you think the use of music as medicine will grow popular?
All New Yorkers go for the quick fix. A pill. Want to fall asleep faster? Benzo. These things have side effects. Instead: Push the button. You can be your own doctor.

How did you first become interested in music’s effect on the brain?
I went to music school. Now, I record brain waves and translate them into musical frequencies, so your brain plays the music. I give you a CD with your brain’s music.

And what happens when someone listens to her own brain music? What’s the effect?
It’s like listening to your mom’s voice, your daughter’s voice.

Do people ever hate the music of their brain?
Sometimes they don’t like it. But it helps with focus, motivation—anything—85 to 90 percent of the time. You can add it to your playlist.

How does someone determine the frequency of music that is best for what he is trying to do?
If you’re very nervous and you want to calm yourself down, you want to listen to something of a lower frequency. To get motivated or excited—to stimulate your brain—listen to something of higher frequency, generally.
If you want to determine the ideal frequency for you and what you’re trying to do—something more accurate than just “I like this”—buy the book.

What is your song? What do you listen to to train your brain?
I was born in the North Pole, I moved to Moscow when I was 5. You’re a little kid, and everything is white—whiteness and white noise. I’d get confused; kids would sometimes wander outside in the night, because it was always light. I and the other kids would play with a little white fox and a baby polar bear.
For me, to focus, I have to go back to my childhood, into that white-noise space. Silence. Complete silence. And then I can go into my playlist.

By Linnea Covington

Texas native Robert Jackson spent three and a half years compiling a complete history on a structure far from his home, something 33 million East Coasters pass through every year: the Holland Tunnel. Built in 1927, this daily part of New Yorkers’ lives was at the time the longest and largest of the vehicular tunnels in the entire world, and the first to utilize a ventilation system.

Robert Jackson

In Highway Under the Hudson, Jackson delves into not only the history of this famous tunnel but the drama behind its construction, the people involved and the unique engineering that took place.

What drew you to writing about the Holland Tunnel?
A few years ago, Director of New York University Press Steve Maikowski decided that a book on the Holland Tunnel needed to be written and he began searching for an author. I was recommended to him and was eager to accept the challenge due to my strong interest in the history of transportation engineering. After reading my history of the Eads Bridge, Steve decided that I was the right person to tackle the story and the rest, as they say, is history.

This is a very rich history; how did you start your research?
I began my research by contacting the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to see what records it retained from the state commissions that built the tunnel, before they merged with the Port Authority in 1930. Unfortunately, all of those records had been stored in the Port Authority library in the World Trade Center and were lost on 9/11. But the New York State Library and Archives in Albany and the New York Public Library had enough material to get me started. I also relied upon the C. M. Holland Collection at Case Western University and found other bits and pieces of documentation in other libraries as I went along.

What surprised you most about the Holland Tunnel?
When I began, I assumed that the tunnel had been built primarily for use by passenger vehicles, with truck traffic being of lesser importance. Just the opposite was true; it was built to facilitate the movement of freight from New Jersey to New York, with accommodation of passenger vehicles a secondary consideration. I was also surprised to find that, around the time of World War I, approximately 50 percent of the nation’s foreign trade annually passed through the port of New York.

What did not surprise me because I have studied other great construction projects but might surprise others is the cost in human life of building and maintaining a major piece of urban infrastructure. By my count, at least 14 workers died during construction of the tunnel, though it was thought that only 13 had died until I did my research. Also, two men, one firefighter and one patrol officer, died during the fire of 1949. It had previously been assumed that no one died because of the fire. In addition, two of the chief engineers died from overwork while the tunnel was under construction.

How does the Holland Tunnel compare to other large passenger tunnels?
There are many other vehicular tunnels that exceed the Holland Tunnel in size, length or visual beauty, but the Holland Tunnel holds a unique place in the history of tunnel engineering as the first such structure that was mechanically ventilated. It thus influenced the design of virtually every vehicular tunnel that that came after it. It will never relinquish its place as a seminal work of civil and mechanical engineering.

How long do you think the tunnel will last?
All great works of humankind are destined to fade away at some point, but, as the title of my last chapter states, the Holland Tunnel was built to last. I believe that with proper maintenance, it will remain in use long after you and I are gone.

With so much press surrounding the possibility of the arrival of Wal-Mart in Manhattan, it’s hard to believe there was a time when the department store was king of the New York City shopping world. But, as writer Michael Lisicky details in his latest book, Gimbels Has It!, Macy’s wasn’t always the undisputed champion of the New York City department store, as anyone who has ever seen holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street will remember. Just across the street from Macy’s Herald Square flagship was Gimbels, a fierce competitor that eventually fell from favor as the times changed.

The youngest of three boys, Lisicky remembers his mother religiously shopping at Gimbels Budget Store in southern New Jersey, a memory that, while fuzzy, struck a retail chord in his mind. Now, when not playing the oboe for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the 47-year-old pores over yellowing newspaper articles and archives about the nation’s old shops. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and 12-year-old daughter, neither of whom minds his obsession with shopping—even if he doesn’t buy anything.

What drew you to Gimbels?

Gimbels

While promoting last year’s book Wanamaker’s: Meet Me at the Eagle, I met so many former Gimbels Philadelphia employees. I thought Gimbels had just vanished, but it hadn’t. The store closed in 1986 but its former employee base in Philadelphia is still extremely loyal to their old store and they frequently keep in touch. It was heartwarming to meet them and I decided it was time to pay tribute to Gimbels since everybody has heard of it, whether you went there or not.

How did you go about researching the store?

My idea of a vacation is going to a city library and parking myself in front of a microfilm machine. You get to read the urgency and emotion behind the news item. Whenever a store closed, newspapers printed eulogies about the loss of a local institution. They make for a wonderful and historic read. After about 15 years of good work, I’ve basically exhausted the Library of Congress and the bulk of the archives.

You talk about going to Gimbels as a child; what do you remember most about those times?

My mother was a department store shopper—I think Gimbels Budget Store kept her away from the discount stores until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She would spend hours in them. I don’t know what we did during all that time but the toy department, bakery and candy counters must have helped.

Is there anything that compares to Gimbels today?

The quick answer is no. Gimbels tried to be everything to everybody. Its famous slogan was, “Nobody but nobody undersells Gimbels.” That worked through the 1950s, but then society changed. While other stores like Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and A&S [Abraham & Straus] changed and defined their customers, Gimbels stood still.

By the early 1980s, America’s middle class was either trading up or trading down. Gimbels was irrelevant and its antiquated building didn’t help its image. You just can’t be everything to everybody these days.

How would something like Gimbels thrive in these times?

There was a time when over 6,000 employees worked in the Greeley Square store. Corporations look at bottom lines—nobody can support that size of a labor force. Department stores were known for service, and it cost money to provide that benefit. People are now interested in price and convenience, period.

It’s interesting to see the discount industry shaking up. It’s hard to believe that Filene’s Basement and Syms will soon be just a memory.

How did the closing of Gimbels affect New York City?

When it closed, many people had forgotten about the store. And now, most people probably don’t realize that the Manhattan Mall is located in the former flagship. But quite a few people still remember Gimbels quite fondly and that is who this book is written for, along with anyone who craves learning more about New York’s past.

No rivalry will ever serve as a better representation of New York City itself than that of the ruthlessly ambitious Robert Moses and the community-minded Jane Jacobs. Moses, the mercurial, all-powerful “master builder” responsible for everything from the Cross Bronx Expressway to Jones Beach, found his near-absolute power overthrown by urban activist Jacobs, whose book The Death and Life of Great American Cities and successful protest of Moses’ planned elevated thruway in Soho almost single-handedly destroyed the vision of cities as characterless, efficiency-driven monoliths that Moses had successfully propagated.

In The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (out now in paperback), urban advocate—and longtime friend of Jacobs—Roberta Brandes Grazt examined the impact of Moses and Jacobs on the city in which she grew up and still resides, while also looking at the current state of New York City’s urban battles through the lens of both visions.

You come down pretty strongly in favor of Jane Jacobs over Robert Moses in Battle for Gotham.

Janet Jacobs.

Roberta Brandes Grazt: They are totally incompatible, and the only people who find “On the one hand this, and on the other hand that,” are the people who don’t have the guts to find that they are incompatible. You have to fish or cut bait. People always cite Moses’ parks [as positive outcomes of his work], but my point is a) there are beautiful parks all over this country that were not built by Robert Moses and b) look at all the beautiful waterfront parks we’re building today without Moses. Moses was about power, not about design. Unlimited power. There’s no room in unlimited power for what Jacobs is about.

If Moses was about the Big Idea, what was Jacobs about?

Jacobs is about process, not just about short blocks and mixed use. Those are the easy concepts of Jacobs. I have no patience for people who try to do a little bit of each. And the only way to do a little bit of each is to misinterpret Jacobs. She’s not about small-scale, period. She has nothing wrong with big-scale, if it’s done right and on the right thing. A skyscraper in the right place was fine!

Is there nothing redeeming about Moses for you?

Zip, zero, zilch. My main point is there was nothing Moses accomplished that couldn’t have been accomplished without the destruction and displacement of people, businesses and places with dictatorial power. Plenty of cities across this country wiped out neighborhoods with highways and city renewal, and they did it without Moses but with Moses’ example. Moses helped write the early laws; he was first in line for all the big funding; New York got the lion’s share of the funding and then he was hired by cities across the country to design highways and systems—some of which got built and some that didn’t. He set the pattern for the country.

The reality of how destructive it was is borne out in how many places are undoing that pattern today, and the vibrancy that is coming back because of that. The fact that we defeated Westway and have an over-the-top, highly developed, interestingly developed whole West Side. You can go to San Francisco, you can go to Milwaukee—I cite all these places in the book to show that the undoing of Moses’ pattern is what is helping cities today. The very undoing of it underscores the invalidity of it in its original form.

What Moses projects here in NYC would you like to see undone?

I think it would be a very interesting challenge to figure out how to reweave the isolated projects, like the towers in the park public housing projects, into the urban fabric so that people are connected and not isolated. The biggest sin of that era—and Moses was not the only one extolling it—was the separation of uses. I think there needs to be a way to bring back the corner store and mixed uses in the public spaces. And perhaps building some low-rise senior citizen housing on those sites so some tower residents can comfortably move in so they don’t have to leave the neighborhood. Undoing the BQE that so split South Brooklyn. These are big challenges!

As far as power is concerned, we fool ourselves into thinking there’s no Robert Moses today. The big developers are the power, the partnership of big developers with city government. You can’t stand in the way of [Bruce] Ratner; our planning structure is an expediter for big development. It’s another form of overwhelming top-down power.

What do you think about the proposed Upper East Side waste transfer station?

Nobody wants those things in their own backyard. The fact is, they have been over-concentrated in neighborhoods, and until they are fairly distributed so that neighborhoods are responsible for their own garbage, where’s the equity? I also think that if people are so concerned about waste transfer in their neighborhood, then what they should really be concerned about is a massive recycling program to sensitize people to the fact that if they aren’t more recycling-minded, they’re going to have more garbage trucks in their neighborhood. There are ways to diminish the garbage.

And how do you feel about bike lanes?

Robert Moses with the Battery Bridge model.

They’re the best thing to happen to this city since sliced bread! And if you want to talk about undoing Moses! I’m always amused when I see Janette Sadik-Khan referred to as a Moses because she’s done bike lanes on a big scale. Well, excuse me, that’s Jane Jacobs on a big scale! Moses had no interest in any form of transportation other than cars, but streets were supposed to be for people.

Transportation is a multimodal kind of thing, and we have so let the population assume cars have the most important right that it’s very hard to accept. I find it particularly outrageous of areas in Brooklyn where former or present officials want their official car privileges and they live within walking distance of perfectly good subway service. They don’t have to ride bikes, they can ride the subway—they shouldn’t be so dependent on their car. I have no patience for people who think the car should be dominant.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons photos

Film writer Sam Wasson has made a name for himself with books that shed new light on familiar subjects. After chronicling the films of director Blake Edwards in A Splurch in the Kisser, Wasson narrowed his sights to a single Edwards film: Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The result was last summer’s buzziest book, the New York Times bestselling Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.

Joining the newly released paperback edition of Fifth Avenue this month is Wasson’s latest book, another examination of mostly New York City-based films and a valiant demand to consider Paul Mazursky in the same breath as other rule-bending, iconoclastic ’70s directors like Scorsese and Coppola. With a series of interviews with Mazursky, his actors and colleagues, Wasson makes a convincing case for Mazursky’s right to a wider critical reappraisal. We caught up with Wasson over the phone and discussed the most romantic romantic movie of all time, the reasons why Mazursky has slipped from the public consciousness and the Holy Grail of show biz stories.

Sam Wasson.

Have you been consciously choosing topics that are hiding in plain sight?
You want to hit the sweet spot of the cultural consciousness. If it is too far remote, no one will give a shit. And if it’s already conscious, then it’s already been done. So you’re trying to walk this fine line between what’s available and what’s yet to be done.

What prompted you to write Fifth Avenue?
I had written A Splurch in the Kisser. And Edwards did this slapstick stuff, and Tiffany’s was an anomaly. When it came time to write that chapter in the book, I thought it would be an easy ride through. But there was almost nothing written about the movie. Some bits in Audrey Hepburn books, but nothing substantial. And the idea to write a book about this, the most romantic romantic movie of all time—the playing field was wide open. I basically wrote the book that I was looking for while writing the Blake Edwards book. Mazursky was an act of love; Tiffany’s was about continuing the conversation in my head.

You make a pretty solid case for Mazursky as the least acclaimed auteur of ’70s Hollywood.
There are a lot of reasons for that. But really, he didn’t fit with the image of the rest of the guys, with the Scorsese and the Coppola. Mazursky made nothing like Bonnie and Clyde. [His movies] were soft, they were tender. And put that up against a Mean Streets or a Rosemary’s Baby and you’re talking about a guy who was not a part of what everyone else was doing. And of course, he was older than those guys.

What were you most surprised by while researching Tiffany’s?
How racy the part was for the time. When it was released, it was so hot that Paula Strasberg told Marilyn Monroe to not take the movie. And Audrey Hepburn was worried that as a new mother, it would ruin her image. After the film was released, people were offended by the image of a call girl. So much about Tiffany’s was somewhat morally dubious.
Also that they shot two endings, and that the ending we have is the second ending, written by Blake Edwards.

And with Mazursky?
How comparatively easy it was to have a movie made in the late ’70s and ’80s. They would greenlight a script based on an idea, based on your own track record. The amount of integrity, the amount of fraternity that went on in the business, the sense that we’re all in this together. It was show business, absolutely, and people were in it to make money, but they also loved each other. That I found unbelievably moving.

Your next book is going to be about another ’70s filmmaker who rewrote the rules, Bob Fosse. How did you go from Mazursky to Fosse?
All That Jazz is the definitive show business movie, and to me, a guy who makes his living telling show biz stories, it has always been the Holy Grail. But the image of Fosse in All That Jazz is not the full man. I think it’s true of all of us that if we were to write our story, it would not be the story, it would be a version of the story. And All That Jazz had few of the joys of being Bob Fosse.

Some local students are learning the story behind the books.

Behind the Book, based on the Upper West Side, is a nonprofit that brings local authors and illustrators to underserved classrooms throughout the five boroughs. The eight-year-old organization’s goal is motivating kids, Pre-K to 12th grade, to read and write.

“The kids learn without even knowing it, by having fun” said Jo Umans, executive director and founder of Behind the Books. “Connecting the books to the actual school program empowers teachers and strengthens the curriculum, and having the author join in makes it exciting for the students.”

Award-winning illustrator Brian Pinkney demonstrates his watercolor technique to students at CS 21.

In 2003, Umans left her 25-year career in television and school libraries after she created a project for the Trevor School PTA connecting authors with children in the classroom. The idea stayed in her head and she did some research, finding out that some public schools don’t even have libraries.

“I didn’t know how to begin, but a dog-walking friend of mine wrote me an initial mission statement after hearing me talk about the project—fast-forward, Behind the Book expanded very fast,” Umans said.

The books are supplied for free to classrooms a month before the program starts, with the one requirement being that the book must be read by the teacher and students so they can discuss the work.

Most of the authors are from New York, so students can connect with the authors, many of whom have come from similar backgrounds. Umans said kids especially love the fact that the author might have grown up in their borough or even on their block.

Behind the Book has brought in authors such as Liz Levy, Patricia McCormick, Alex Simmons, New York Times reporter Michael Winerip, Tony Medina, Trish Marx and others. Before the program comes in, a call takes place between the author, teacher and Umans so they can build a curriculum around the selected book and topic.

“We don’t just barge in with our program and put it on the students or teachers—we like to be a team and work together,” Umans added.

In the past year, Behind the Book has visited 89 schools. This year, they have 19 more schools on a waiting list.

Umans said students have told her that, if it weren’t for Behind the Book, they wouldn’t be reading at all and they particularly appreciate that the books reflect their lives, livening up their interest in reading in general.

“Kids feel more comfortable talking and writing about their own lives with someone who shares the same story,” Umans added.

For more information, visit behindthebook.org.

Any discussion of Rosanne Cash these days must include some reference to her lively, busy Twitter page, which details everything from the new shoes she bought to the things she worries about at three in the morning. This being Cash, however, her 3 a.m. fears aren’t the usual insomniac’s. Instead of mortality, she wondered on Twitter “What if there’s a sprinkler & it goes off when I’m sleeping & my red hair color gets on the pillow & someone thinks it’s blood.” Cash saves her dark nights of the soul for her music.

Cash greeted questions about her life on Twitter with a laugh. “I have a lot of manic energy and it’s a good place to dump it so I don’t have to carry it around with me,” she said.

One of the more engaging celebrities on Twitter, Cash shrugged off the suggestion that she might have enjoyed the social network when she was a Nashville hitmaker in the 1980s. “I think it would have been awkward. I didn’t have as good a sense of myself,” she said. And certainly the Internet trolls who come out of the shadows to attack her for her liberal views would have been even more unnerving than they are today.

“They’re so vicious,” Cash said. “A lot of them will use my dad to attack me, ‘He would be so ashamed of you!’” She paused. “Sometimes I just choose to see them as figures of my subconscious, just to put a perspective on it. ‘These are not real, they’re just a little nightmare that I can wake up from.’”

And Cash certainly has enough on her plate to shrug off the occasional attacks on her Twitter page. In addition to her usual summertime touring schedule, this year she’s celebrating the paperback release of her lilting memoir Composed and the release this past spring of the Essential Rosanne Cash, a must-have for fans of both country music and singer-songwriters, and somehow found the time to write songs for an upcoming album, her first since 2009’s The List and her first album of new material since 2006’s Black Cadillac.

“We’re trying to get T Bone Burnett to produce, if he’s not too busy,” Cash confided. “I’m in the middle of writing songs. I was trying to describe [the new album’s sound] to somebody; some of it is very rootsy, some of it is very tough and some of it is very Julie London. I’m really digging it,” she said.

As for making the press rounds for Composed again, Cash is weary but game. “I want to spend some time in my own kitchen and just think and not do,” she said from the road. A decade in the writing, Composed is a wry and carefully observed memoir that shies away from digging too deep beneath Cash’s persona, while giving away as much personal information as she deems appropriate. An easy book to read, Composed couldn’t have been an easy one to write. Cash remembers her editor insisting on including what she didn’t think was necessary: the eulogies she delivered over the course of two years for her stepmother, father and mother, a series of losses that inspired the haunting Black Cadillac.

“It was like the—I hate to say nadir, but the center dark point. I argued with my editor quite a lot about it, actually,” Cash said. “And he felt so strongly about it that I capitulated. And I thought framing it in what I wore to each funeral was a nice psychological device, to balance out the mourning. On the hardest days of your life, to think about what I’m gonna wear—I thought that made it more poetic.”

Cash’s fans already know that she has a knack for finding the poetry—and salvation—in the darkness. She wouldn’t admit it on Twitter, but surely that’s what she’s really doing at three in the morning.

Cash will be signing copies of Composed 7 p.m., Aug. 9, Barnes and Noble, 33 E. 17th St. & 7 p.m., Aug. 11, powerHouse Arena, 37 Main St., Brooklyn.

Meg Wolitzer, author of The Ten-Year Nap
“The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, the stories of John Cheever and, of course, Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh.”

The Age of Innocence

Todd Strasser, author of Famous
“Certainly Bonfire of the Vanities is one. Anything set there and written by Joan Didion, Woody Allen or Nora Ephron would also have to be among my favorites.”

Dr. Susan O’Doherty, psychologist and literary blogger
“I love Dominick Dunne’s novels, especially People Like Us. He was enough of an insider in that world to present a detailed and convincing picture of life on Fifth Avenue, yet he was cynical about privilege. A truly engaging combination.”

Melissa de la Cruz, author of the Blue Bloods series and newly released Witches of East End
“Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe—the best!”

Katharine Weber, author of The Memory of All That
“[Books that come to mind include] Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, and American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.”

Harris Healy, owner of Logos Bookstore, 1575 York Ave.
Stuart Little by E.B. White, especially the scene in the boat basin in Central Park. The Upper East Side lends itself well to children’s literature, especially in books like Stuart Little and The House on East 88th Street, which features Lyle the crocodile. The East Side is a big neighborhood for families with young children, and lots of children’s literature comes from that.

Meg Wolitzer, Upper East Side mom and New York Times bestselling author, decided to draw inspiration from her experiences in the neighborhood when writing her 2008 novel The Ten-Year Nap. The popular book focuses on a group of young moms facing personal, vocational, and familial conflicts.

“I had spent quite a few years hanging out with Upper East Side mothers, both working and non-working, and their children,” Wolitzer said. “When I came up with the idea for the novel, I felt that the Upper East Side was an area I could write about with authenticity.”

Meg Wolitzer.

The author, who grew up in Long Island, explains that living on the Upper East Side has not only shaped The Ten-Year Nap, which is set in the neighborhood, but also her other novels, including the recently released The Uncoupling, a story that unfolds in a suburban New Jersey town.

Wolitzer explains, “A writer is always influenced by her surroundings, and I think the Upper East Side has naturally affected me a great deal. I’ve spent a lot of time in Central Park, which is a real nucleus for all kinds of things, and I’ve listened in on conversations in coffee shops and dry cleaners in the neighborhood.”

The Upper East Side has not only been inspirational for Wolitzer, but has also been an integral part of the writing process for her.

“I live near Carl Schurz Park, a place I really love, and when I walk my dog on the promenade in the morning, I am often mapping out a section of a new book in my head,” she said.

The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling and Meg Wolitzer’s other novels are available at Amazon.com and other booksellers.

Why the neighborhood continues to inspire authors, and some of the great reads (old and new) that are set just outside your door

By Beth Mellow

Hundreds of dead butterflies fell onto party attendees at the most highly anticipated fête of the year. At the stroke of midnight, in the ballroom of a grand Fifth Avenue penthouse, Chilean butterflies danced underneath luminous spotlights to the delight of the partiers. However, the light proved too strong for the insects and the electricity blew out, resulting in darkness, pandemonium and a rainfall of butterfly carcasses. Guests sustained broken bones and bruises as they rushed for the exits.

It would have been a night to remember if it had happened, but it never did. The tale comes from the bestselling Upper East Side-set novel People Like Us by Dominick Dunne.

From the gilded age of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence to the ballrooms of Dunne’s novels, the Upper East Side continues to be a popular setting for literature.

David Whetter, manager of Shakespeare & Co., with Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. Photo by Andrew Schwartz.

Dr. Susan O’Doherty, psychologist, literary blogger and author, explained, “I think the Upper East Side is a brand, sort of like the Left Bank or Bloomsbury, that conjures certain pictures in readers’ minds, whether or not they have ever been there. There is an association in many people’s minds between Upper East Side and ‘old money.’”

She said the setting intrigues people who aren’t as wealthy and toil away at unglamorous jobs.

“There is the fantasy of another easier, more elegant life,” she said.

Dominick Dunne exposed readers to the inner workings of privileged Park Avenue in his novels, including Too Much Money and People Like Us. In both books, readers are invited into exclusive clubs and restaurants, and the luxurious homes of the elite. They witness insider trading in People Like Us, but they also get an inside look at spending sprees that include wallet-defying purchases of antiques, jewels and even overly expensive window treatments.

According to David Whetter, manager of bookstore Shakespeare & Co., 939 Lexington Ave., the juxtaposition of old money with middle-class ethics, as well as the struggles of the poor, creates engaging literature.

“Money makes social strata,” he said. “A book like Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities exposes a [wealthy Park Avenue banker] to other parts of New York. That kind of writing is fascinating.”

In Bonfire of the Vanities, Sherman McCoy, a white, millionaire bond trader, and his mistress accidentally hit a young African-American man with their car in the Bronx. The story ultimately takes Sherman away from the comfort of his exclusive East Side apartment, where he and his family reside, to a holding cell in the Bronx. The novel contrasts the lives of McCoy and his circle with the middle-class district attorney who prosecutes him, as well as highlights issues of class and racism in 1980s New York City.

Harris Healy, owner of Logos Bookstore, 1575 York Ave., agreed that money and social status are two of the most prevalent themes that run through literature set on the Upper East Side.

“Money is always something of an attraction,” he said. “Books like The Age of Innocence or 740 Park are classic examples of this. They have fascinating characters, who lead interesting lives because they have the means to do so.”

Authors began publishing books about the Upper East Side elite far before Dunne and Wolfe. In fact, 100 years ago, Edith Wharton, an insider herself, set several novels—including The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence and parts of The Buccaneers—against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue.

“I do think [Edith Wharton] was the most significant novelist to first write about the Upper East Side, having herself come from the Jones family with whom so many wanted to keep up,” said author Katharine Weber, whose Upper East Side-focused memoir, The Memory of All That, will be released later this summer. “She had a keen eye for the social maneuverings and obsessions that meant as much in the Gilded Age as they do today, when people are still obsessed with real estate and who lives where.”

While much of the Upper East Side literary cannon has focused on money and social class, newer novels are featuring different aspects of the neighborhood.

The recent New York Times bestseller The Ten-Year Nap, by Meg Wolitzer, follows a group of East Side mothers as they deal with the classic conflict of parenthood versus career. Jonathan Lethem’s alternate reality novel, Chronic City, takes two of the book’s main characters on a post-pot smoking burger binge at Jackson Hole on Second Avenue. Adam Davies’ The Frog King provides readers with a view into the rat infested Yorkville walk-up of a twenty-something jobless and lovelorn book editor.

The young adult novel Dark Dude, by Oscar Hijuelos, takes readers north and back in time to 1960s East Harlem.

Todd Strasser, another young adult novelist, whose recent book Famous is set on the Upper East Side, points out that while he selected the locale for its prestige and glamour, he also had a more mundane reason.

“One thinks of the best physicians in the city as having their offices there and a visit by a celebrity to one such office is a key event in my book,” he said.

In addition to Dark Dude and Famous, which tells the story of a teenage paparazzo, a slew of other young adult novels set on the Upper East Side have been published in recent years. Cecily von Ziegesar’s blockbuster Gossip Girl series focuses on the lives of prep schoolers and has inspired the popular television show. The New York Times bestselling Blue Bloods series, authored by Melissa de la Cruz, follows the love lives, trials and travails of young vampires on the Upper East Side. Vampires, but not ones that are friendly or that you can fall in love with, also live on the Upper East Side in the hip urban fantasy trilogy City of Ashes, by Cassandra Clare.

“The Upper East Side just seemed like a natural place to set my elite vampires. It’s the powerful enclave of New York movers and shakers. It’s Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue, Jackie O. and the Met. It has history and beauty. It’s not just a place to live. It means much more,” de la Cruz said. She also has has an adult novel about witches in the Hamptons out this month, titled Witches of East End.

Novelists set their books on the Upper East Side for various reasons.

“I think the Upper East Side is appealing to writers because the landmarks are so clear and specific,” Weber said. “If the setting is evoked, then there is an automatic signal about a lot of encoded values and meanings. This might be critical, it might be satiric, and it might be an act of devotion. It depends on the book and author.”

Strasser had a much simpler explanation.

“It gives an author the chance to dream of seeing his or her book jacket on a wall in Quatorze Bis,” he said, referencing the popular French Bistro on 79th Street, between First and Second avenues.