Books: Wonderful Town MANHATTAN '45

by Jan Morris Oxford University; 273 pages; $17.95

It lay somewhere between the Proustian ambience of Woody Allen's films and the never-never land of the Emerald City: a town of tart talk and smooth tunes, where women sported black silk stockings and Cadillacs purred down clean streets kept orderly by serried ranks of trusted policemen. The skyline, crowned by the 1,250-ft. Empire State Building, was the most imposing man-made sight in the world, and at night it glowed with the fires of 2 million aspirations. Visitors to Grand Central Station, where the trains were out of sight and the zodiac was on the ceiling, could get information on any...

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