About
Nathaniel Popkin
Born in Trenton, NJ, Nathaniel Popkin has been writing about cities for twenty years. His essays on city life, the environment, and Philadelphia have appeared in various publications. His book Song of the City: An intimate history of the American urban landscape (2002, Four Walls Eight Windows), which the book critic Carlin Romano calls “exquisitely literary,” relates the struggles, despair, and above all, love, that defines the relationship of a people to their city at the turn of the twenty-first century. His photography seeks an understanding of the individual in context of the crowded and often claustrophobic street. Popkin is the Writer-in-Residence at Philadelphia University and a frequent contributor to the Philadelphia City Paper and to PhillySkyline.com, where he writes a column called “The Possible City.” He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Rona Buchalter and two children.
Profiles
Celebrating Cities from The Pennsylvania Gazette
Text in the city from southphillyreview.com
Author sings love song about City of Philadelphia from Courier-Post
The siren song of Nathaniel Popkin from philly1.com
Book
“In the stories, you will discover not only the vastness of the city’s landscape but also its people. My city is their stories. It is a powerful, reckless place.”
In the spirit of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, Song of the City shouts its praise for American city life and for the curbside democracy that enables Popkin’s “crush of voices” to coexist in the microcosm that is one city block.
Writing of Song of the City, the literary critic Carlin Romano said that the work “was exquisitely literary … electric … . Those who care about cities everywhere will respond to Popkin’s policy passion, his urban arabesques.” The Midwest book review noted that Song of the City “Embodies the quintessential human experience.” In his 2006 book Metropolitan Philadelphia: Living in the Presence of the Past, historian Steve Conn wrote, “[Song of the City] is the finest book about contemporary Philadelphia I have come across.”
