How We Got By

When your world is upended, how do you react? Who do you become? Two New York Times columnists, illustrator Julia Rothman and writer Shaina Feinberg, seek answers to these questions and more in this gorgeously illustrated collection of sometimes heartbreaking, always illuminating first-person stories.

Based on one of Shaina Feinberg and Julia Rothman's columns in the New York Times, “How We Got By: New Yorkers’ Advice for Getting Through a Crisis,” How We Got By is an ambitious journalistic undertaking rendered in an artful, collectible package. In their own words, 111 New Yorkers tell their stories in striking essays about living through challenges from divorce to death, escaping war to facing new roles in life, adoption to mental health. With each person's story accompanied by one of Rothman’s full-color illustrated portraits, these personal accounts touch on a wide variety of subjects, from money and business to relationships, family, trauma, and death.

A window into the world of how others think, feel, and, ultimately, survive, How We Got Byinvites us to remember our shared humanity as well as our truly extraordinary resilience. It is a thoughtful read and a beautiful gift.