Riis was among the first in the United States to conceive of photographic images as instruments for social change; he was also among the first to use flash powder to photograph interior views, and his book How the Other Half Lives was one of the earliest to employ halftone reproduction successfully. -- Lisa Hostetler

Essential reading for every American.

Jacob Riis, a police reporter and an immigrant himself, was intimately acquainted with the squalid living conditions in New York's tenements. He published this book to expose the reality of the quotidian life of New York's poorest in the 1880s. How the Other Half Lives, the first exposé of its kind, is an incisive sociological survey but also a sensitive portrait of Riis's subjects showing their humanity and heroism. This edition is fully illustrated.