Rob Snyder reads from “When the City Stopped”

His new book, When the City Stopped, (Cornell University Press, 2025) preserves for future generations what it was like to be in New York when it was at the center of the COVID pandemic. The story is told through the words of health care workers, grocery clerks, transit workers, and community activists who recount their experiences in poems, first-person narratives, and interviews. In When the City Stopped, Rob tells the story of COVID-19 in the words of ordinary New Yorkers, illuminating the fear and uncertainty of life in the early weeks and months, as well as the solidarity that sustained the city.