“Based on masterful fieldwork, The Tour Guide is an enormously interesting book. Wynn’s extensive interviews and observation show us a variety of people giving tours of New York in a variety of ways, and by the time you finish the book you’ve learned a great deal about them, how they work, and why they do it. While The Tour Guide intersects with other classic books on urban life, Wynn’s major accomplishment here is to provide a unique way of looking at cities you would never have arrived at just by thinking about them yourself.”

Howard S. Becker, author of Outsiders

“Baudelaire identified walking in the city as an art. In that spirit, Jonathan Wynn guides us through the contemporary art of New York City walking tours, which, against the pressures of commodification and homogenization, construct crafty and sometimes subversive narratives of the urban experience. A great guide, of course, has an eye for the small details and the big picture, as well as the weave between them. So does Wynn, demonstrating through richly textured accounts how a city’s identity is made and remade by real people every day.”

Richard Lloyd, author of Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City

“I read Jonathan Wynn’s investigation of the work and identities of New York City walking tour guides with marvel and delight. Wynn has found an intriguing topic which he creatively explores through ethnographic research. His book offers an artful analysis of this gripping facet of contemporary urban life.”

Margarethe Kusenbach, University of South Florida