After Joe Gould's Secret
- 'a miniature masterpiece of a shaggy dog story' (Observer)
- here is another collection of stories by Joseph Mitchell, each connected in one way or another with the waterfront of New York City. As William Fiennes wrote in the London Review of Books, ' Mitchell was the laureate of the waters around New York', & in The Bottom of the Harbor he records the lives & practices of the rivermen, with love & understanding & a sharp eye for the eccentric & strange. This is some of the best journalist ever written.