About New York

New York is the state that argues most successfully for the proposition that America is the most extraordinary country in the history of civilization. The city that bears its name, 8.3 million people packed into 302.6 square miles, is the financial capital of the world, the cultural capital of the English-speaking world, home to the United Nations, the most visited tourist destination in the United States, and a living demonstration that people from every nation, speaking every language, can build something together that is greater than any of them could build separately.

But New York is far more than its city. The state stretches 330 miles from the Bronx to the Canadian border, encompassing the wild Adirondack wilderness, the agricultural valleys of the Mohawk and the Finger Lakes, the industrial cities of Buffalo and Rochester that powered America's manufacturing age and now navigate its transition, and the historic Hudson Valley corridor along which the nation's founding history is concentrated like nowhere else. These two New Yorks, the city and the state, are in constant tension: politically, economically, and culturally, they often seem to be different countries sharing a name.

The Erie Canal, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Ellis Island, Saratoga, the New York City subway, Wall Street, Broadway, the Harlem Renaissance, hip-hop, abstract expressionism, punk rock, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the history of New York is inseparable from the history of America. No other state has absorbed as many immigrants, produced as many presidents, invented as many cultural forms, or concentrated as much economic power. No other state has fallen as far and risen as dramatically. Its motto, "Excelsior," ever upward, has been tested as severely as any state motto ever has, and New York has earned it.