Let the Great World Spin

People in lower Manhattan stand silently in the early morning light of a late summer morning, peering up at the Twin Towers with a look of shock. A mystery tightrope walker is seen sprinting, dancing, and jumping between the towers in August 1974 while hanging 25 feet above the earth. In this incredibly detailed portrayal of a city and its inhabitants, best-selling author Colum McCann shows how many ordinary lives in the streets below become remarkable.

Allow the vast world to The highly regarded author's most ambitious book to date, Spin presents a stunningly complex picture of the suffering, beauty, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

A radical young Irish monk named Corrigan lives among prostitutes in the heart of the Bronx and battles his own personal problems. When a group of moms get together in a Park Avenue apartment to grieve for their sons who were killed in Vietnam, they find that their differences in mourning still exist. A teenage artist witnesses a hit-and-run that sends her life spiraling out of control. Thirty-eight-year-old Tillie, her grandma, plays games with her teenage daughter, trying to show her value and take care of her family.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” Let the Great World Spin is a vast and revolutionary social book that brilliantly depicts the spirit of America at a period of tremendous promise, profound change, and, looking back, tragic innocence. The San Francisco Chronicle has praised award-winning author McCann as having a "fiercely original talent." His magnificently American masterwork awakens in us an understanding of what the book may accomplish, confront, and even heal.