Inspired by Robert Caro's The Power Broker, Ric Burns spent the past decade working on his own project about the city, "New York: A Documentary Film," a 14-hour PBS miniseries. His team also put together a companion book, New York: An Illustrated History. The Power Broker was the first book that Ric Burns read about New York City when he moved here for college 24 years ago but for all that, The Power Broker is not Ric Burns' favorite book about New York City. "It's hard to beat Here is New York by E.B. White , a 50-page essay about New York that registers the city's complexity, but at the same time captures its spirit. It manages to penetrate a subject that is almost infinitely vast." And then, he says, before The Power Broker, he would also list George Templeton Strong's diary and Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

James Sanders, Burns' co-author, picks many of these same books, and then throws in what he considers classic New York novels: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Washington Square by Henry James, and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. You get the picture. Only a subject as vast as the City of New York could inspire so many writers -- two centuries' worth, starting with Washington Irving.

"There is a cottage industry of people who work on nothing but books about New York City," says John Howat, the curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in charge of "Art and the Empire," the Met's exhibition about the city.

Only in New York could three mammoth projects all published recently -- the 575-page PBS companion book, by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades the 1350-page The Encyclopedia of the City of New York edited by Kenneth Jackson and the 1382-page Gotham:A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, which won the Pulitzer Prize -- seem like just a few more titles on an infinitely expanding shelf of books about the city.

With so many choices, it is too daunting to compile a list of the best books about New York. More productive is a list of the favorites of New Yorkers who know what they're talking about.

Librarians: Reference and Romance

Ask a librarian for the Bible about New York City, and they are likely to cite three: "For those who can afford it," says Ruth Carr, the librarian in charge of local history for the New York Public Library, there is the extraordinary six-volume set of I.N. Phelps Stokes's Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498 - 1909. This monumental work, originally published over a period of 13 years starting in 1915 in oversized volumes that have become rare collectors' items, is a "wonderful history of the island and a wonderful place to find obscure details about Manhattan."

Librarian Joseph Ditta at the New-York Historical Society says their Bible is the Encyclopedia of New York. "We turn to it first. We get lots of different questions from people about New York and it usually has the answer. It saves a lot of hunting time, because someone else has done the research work for us. It is the most heavily-used thing we have."

Both Ditta and Carr also treasure the AIA (American Institute of Architects) Guide to New York City by Norval White and Elliot Willensky, which recently published its fourth edition. (Carr recommends all of them, "because things change") "It answers so many question about New York," says Ditta. "It has great pictures. It's the place to go to answer questions like "How old is my house?"

"I wouldn't really read any of these cover to cover," Ditta advises. "They're not designed to be read that way. They are very useful reference guides."

Other useful reference works: Landmarks of New York by Barbaralee Diamonstein ("useful like the AIA guide," says Ditta, "but it only has official landmarks.") and Gotham.

But ask New York librarians their favorite books rather than the most useful, and you get a different answer. E.L. Doctorow's Waterworks is Ruth Carr's. "He has a real sensibility and feeling [for] nineteenth-century New York City." Part of the novel's action takes place at the historic Croton Reservoir, which, she notes, was located on 42nd Street on the present site of the New York Public Library

The favorite of Harold Auberaughm, director of the Mercantile Library of New York, is Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos which captures the high energy and chaos of New York, especially in the 1930's."

The Mercantile Library has just given its Clifton Fadiman Prize, which goes to a work they think should be read more, to Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick "a highly literary .account of a young woman who comes to New York in the Fifties. It captures the anxieties of those times."

Two novels set in the city captured Paul Perkus, director of the Municipal Reference and Research Center. He read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye when he was living in Brooklyn. "It gave me a romantic image of Manhattan, some of which has stayed with me to this day." He also likes Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, "another of those books that romanticize New York."

Historians: Bohemians And Branches

Though Edwin Burrows spent years looking at old books to research Gotham, it is three recent titles he reels off as "worth a look":

Christine Stansell's American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century, "a smart, very readable account of Greenwich Village in its prime."

Graham Russell Hodges' Root and Branch "opens up the pre-Civil War history of African-Americans in the city."

Shaun O'Connell's Remarkable, Unspeakable New York offers "very astute explications of the city as depicted in 200 years of fiction."

"I also just finished a brilliant New York novel by Frederick Busch, The Night Inspector.

"I could add dozens of others."

James Driscoll, research director of the Queens Historical Society, starts closer to home, citing Queens in Old Photographs by Vincent Seyfried and William Asadorian, and Charming Billy by Alice McDermott, winner of a National Book Award, "an engrossing novel about growing up in an Irish-American family in Bayside, Queens in the 1940s and 1950s." But he is not a Queens chauvinist. Another one of his favorites is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

Booksellers: Bridges And Tunnels And Everything

At Three Lives and Co, an independent bookstore in the Village, the best-selling books, according to owner Jill Dunbar, are much the same as the most popular in the libraries: The Power Broker, The AIA Guide. Another favorite is Here is New York. But the most popular guide book may be one that lists neither the World Trade Center nor even Lincoln Center. The WPA Guide to New York, "focuses on what is classic in the city from the 1920's that survives today. It's a guide to buildings, murals, and public art projects built at time when more money was put into the city to do these sort of projects."

At Everything New York , an on-line store that is now selling books about NYC, owner Scott Lombardo's first pick is the Encyclopedia of New York City because "it has anything and everything," he says, which sounds like a motto. Other picks:

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough

The Parks and Its People: A History of Central Park by Roy Rosenzweig

New York for New Yorkers: A Historical Treasury and Guide to the Buildings and Monuments of Manhattan by Liza M. Greene

The choices of Margot Liddell, manager of Shakespeare and Company, are more obscure:

Lost New York by Nathan Silver "It cites all the famous buildings, before the Landmark Commission was established, that were wiped out."

The Mole People by Susan Toss "Very Interesting topic; at our downtown location there are mole people. There is a tunnel that leads underneath."

This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann "A touching story about a family that lives underneath the ground on the Upper West Side. Beautiful writing."

Writing New York, edited by Philip Lopate "This is especially great. It's a collection of works written by writers who are all from New York."

From Politicians To Gardeners

"New York," E.B. White wrote, "is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant."

And each can find his own New York book to read.

For Mark Goret, a Conservative Party district leader in the Bronx, the book is To Be Mayor of New York by Christopher McNickle. a "very good piece of social history" about ethnic politics and every mayor and mayoral election from the beginning of the twentieth century through Dinkins. "It explains why New York developed the way it developed"

Janet Marinelli, director of publishing for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, prefers "Central Park: Barnes and Noble Complete Illustrated Map and Guide" by Richard J. Berenson and Ray Carroll "I've been in Central Park a million times, but it gave me a whole new perspective on it." Her other favorite is "Sweet Herbs and Sundry Flowers" by Tania Bayard about the gardens of the Cloisters. "It's a charming little book about such a great place in the city" illustrated with medieval woodcuts.

Museum Director: A Mayor And A Mirror

"There are so many good ones, both fiction and nonfiction," says Robert MacDonald, director of the Museum of the City of New York. "I'll pick three." New York Intellect by Thomas Bender. "The best parts of the book talk about the developments in the nineteenth century. Many of the themes focus on the development of a philosophical society, groups that saw New York not only as a financial capital but also had a vision of it as an intellectual capital. These groups led to the creation of the public library, to the creation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Future Once Happened Here by Fred Siegel. "It's the story of the New Deal in New York City primarily, but also Los Angeles and Washington D.C, about how welfare got out of hand.. If you want to understand the political philosophy of Rudolph Giuliani, this is the book to read. Indeed, the mayor was affected by the book. It's a new philosophy for how cities should run, a very insightful book for those who grew up as liberals, whatever that means. It's quite an eye-opener."

Mirror for Gothamby Bayrd Still, "an anthology of writings about New York City from the time of New Amsterdam to the present. These are visitors to the city. If you're a New York addict, you really should read this book; if you want a quote about the city, it's a very good reference guide."

Recycler

One of Robert Lange's favorites is Gotham by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, the history of New York up to 1898, because "though so many things in New York change, some issues return - are recycled - generation after generation. " Lange is the director of the Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling for the Department of Sanitation, which may be why he paid particular attention to the history of garbage in the Gotham book. Even in Peter Stuyvesant's time, the garbage problem was big. "Most of the waste then was organic, it attracted a lot of vermin, was extraordinarily malodorous." Professionally, Lange does not see many books getting recycled. "We recycle soft-cover books. We do not recycle hardcover. The labor costs of removing the binding of a hard cover book exceeds the cost of recycling it. If people will take off the cover, we'll accept it. But we prefer that people reuse their books, give them to friends. Books should remain in circulation."

My constituents complain about it every day.

"I can hear them running in the walls and across my ceilings," cried one who visited my office.

Another stopped me in the street on my way to a meeting: "They're taking over," she explained frantically. "They don't even move when they see you coming down the sidewalk. The rats are no longer afraid of us."

They're in our parks, in our houses, in our subways, and on our streets. I personally have been forced to walk in traffic in order to avoid them. They are out in the open, scampering undisturbed, and growing to phenomenal sizes. Some estimates tell us that there are as many as six rats for every one New Yorker. If that is accurate (and nobody really knows), that means there are close to 44 million rats in New York City. The situation is out of control. Something has to be done.

That is why I am holding a series of hearings, the third and latest on Monday, July 24th, focusing on the epidemic of rats in our city. As Chairman of the New York City Council's Committee on Pest Control, I am attempting to bring together experts in many fieldsÂłthe fields of health, environment, housing, food services, and members of the communityÂłto stomp out this daunting problem.

The testimony has been sobering. Rats can cause damage to property. By gnawing on electrical cables, for example, they present a fire hazard. Rats also pose a potentially serious health threat. They can carry many bacterial diseases, such as salmonella and leptospirosis, and can be hosts to disease-carrying pests, such as ticks and fleas. Rats also bite; there were more than 150 recorded rat bites last year. There is some evidence as well that asthma can be caused, or at least exacerbated, by rodent infestation.

Concerns have also been raised about the amount of toxic pesticides that members of the community are using to combat the vermin, which brings its own set of problems. Pets can ingest the poisons by accident, and there is an apparent relationship between these pesticides and the aggravation of asthma.

They also clearly lower morale in our communities.

The increased visibility of rats, some say, is due to the increase in construction in the city, thereby disturbing their nesting areas. It is also said to be due to New York's use of those black plastic bags for our garbage, rather than the secure metal cans. I myself have seen those bags seem to come alive because there were rats scurrying around in them.

But I think another reason is that attitudes have been too blase about the whole thing. Decades ago, with the help of the federal government, there was a concerted effort to drive down the rat population, not waiting for complaints but acting proactively. About 15 years ago, the resources for such an aggressive effort dwindled, and so did the effort.

The Mayor announced this month that he is beginning a task force on rats, after seeing some on his porch in Gracie Mansion. This puzzles me. This same mayor announced something he called the Comprehensive Rodent Control Initiative back in 1997. Is this the same task force being re-announced? If so, what has it done in the last three years? If not, what happened to the other one?

While some money that was initially taken from the rat control budget has been restored -- the budget is about $13 million in this fiscal year, and the city employs some 23 exterminators -- the Administration is fuzzy even about the extent of New York's pest problem. And there is not a complete accounting of the effectiveness of the pest control methods employed. There is no clear plan of attack nor measurable objectives.

What has been lacking is, to put it succinctly, money and coordination. The efforts of the City agencies like the Departments of Health, Parks, Environmental Protection, and Sanitation, as well as New York City Transit and the Housing Authority, have to be coordinated to be effectiveÂłto make sure the beneficial actions taken by one are not accidentally undone by another. We had testimony that showed that New Yorkers don't even know to whom they're supposed to complain.

New York needs to undertake a plan that combines public education, vigorous inspection (of both public and private buildings) and enforcement, extermination, and follow-up. We need to monitor places that are prone to infestation.

We must look to other cities that have been more effective; Chicago, for example, uses hard containers, not plastic bags, for their garbage. We must learn from innovative programs, such as the pilot program at Lehman Village Houses in East Harlem, the Integrated Pest Management Program, which attempts to control pests without the use of toxic pesticides. The tenants themselves take responsibility for inspecting the building and individual apartments, ke eping surfaces clean, filling gaps in walls, using sealed trash cans, and otherwise taking the advice of a button I've been known to wear: "Starve a Rat Today."

Bill Perkins is a member of the City Council representing the ninth district, which includes the Upper West Side, Central Harlem, East Harlem and Morningside Heights.

Rats are People Too

by Elaine Sloan

Rats are intelligent, curious and sensitive animals. They're shy; they'd rather run than confront a potential threat. They're meticulous about cleaning themselves and take very special care of their young. In so many ways, rats are like dogs, cats, horses, seals and the more popular "poster children" of the animal kingdom.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has always encouraged compassion toward all animals, not just the ones thought to be cute or cuddly. And that is why we recently protested the cruel killing of rats and sea creatures on the CBS television series, Survivor. The show's "Pagong tribe" members were shown giggling as they clubbed live rats; "Tagi tribe" member Richard beamed as live manta rays flopped around helplessly at the end of his spear. PETA's protest made front page news, causing some New Yorkers to balk at the notion that anyone would stick up for rats.

Would viewer reaction have been any different if the peckish Pagongs had bludgeoned a bloodhound? You can bet your last coconut it would. Viewers would have reacted differently here in America, yes, where dogs are revered as "man's best friend." But in Indonesia, Fido is considered a disease-carrying pest: The government recently ordered the estimated 90,000 dogs in the Ngada region of Flores Island killed in the wake of a rabies outbreak. Officials report, "We are beating the dogs...and shooting them. We are killing them in any way we can." Is Indonesia's mass extermination of dogs by bludgeoning cruel? Absolutely. But beating dogs to death is not any more or less cruel than beating smaller fur-bearers to death. That's why PETA has mugs with the slogan: "Rats have rights."

Some New Yorkers pooh-pooh PETA's concern over the Survivor slaughters, citing the city's much-ballyhooed rodent population as some sort of justification for the televised slaying of rats on a remote island thousands of miles away. "Black Plague and rat bites!," paranoid New Yorkers holler, forgetting, apparently, that humans spread far more diseases than rats do (AIDS is a much graver threat to modern city dwellers than the bubonic plague), and dogs bites are far more common than rat nibbles.

You can't really blame New York City's rats for choosing to live where there are ample food sources and shelter. Alleys are lined with piles of trash and the city's garbage cans are overflowingÂłto rats, our city's streets are four star restaurants, our dilapidated buildings are their Four Seasons. Tidy, well-maintained properties don't face the dilemma of how to evict uninvited rodents. If we cleaned up the city, it would be less appealing to uninvited, furry visitors.

Even if you don't care about rodents, consider this: FBI profilers and psychologists know that cruelty to animals is very often a precursor of violence towards humans. The recent rash of deadly school shootings have all had one thing in commonÂłthe young shooters first "practiced" on animals. Do you care about kids? If so, you should be very concerned about the cavalier killing of animals on Survivor by its snickering contestants. It sends a very dangerous message, especially to impressionable children.

Not so long ago, PETA made headlines for suggesting that lobsters in supermarket tanks should be released back to the ocean rather than boiled alive. "Ridiculous!" exclaimed a nation of crustacean crunchers. Editors everywhere panned PETA for liberating lobsters. But PETA's campaign struck a nerveÂłslowly the lobster lovers started crawling out of the closet. Sure, people continue to purchase lobsters, but many are plotting their own lobster liberations. The sitcom, Ellen, featured PETA supporters Mary Tyler Moore and Ellen DeGeneres liberating a lobster. Syndicated columnist Dave Barrry wrote about his soft spot for lobsters. Drew Barrymore recently told Seventeen readers that it is her secret desire to "save all the little live lobsters in restaurants and throw them back in the ocean." (Just don't throw them anywhere near Pulau Tigua, Drew!)

It's no longer considered quite so "kooky" to suggest that it's cruel to throw live creatures into scalding water. It's true that everyone hasn't stopped eating lobsterÂłbut scores of people have. Now PETA receives calls from people all over the country who are eager to rescue lobsters and send them home to the Atlantic.

Just as many Americans have developed a soft spot for hard shells, so it's inevitable that they'll also warm up to pink noses and twitching whiskers. Don't forget that countless folks voluntarily share their homes with rats. They adore their rodent companions, as much as devoted dog "parents" care about their canine "kids." The difference between "pet" and "pest" is one teensy letter -- and, of course, personal prejudices. But perspectives can -- and do -- and will -- change.

Elaine Sloan, a television commercial producer who lives in midtown, is a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals