If you love New York, this very detailed picture of what it was like in 1882 might interest you. (Or maybe his character is pointing out through his actions that this is what people always do – leave the mess for someone else.) He doesn’t seem to have any answer for it, however, except to go back in time and leave the mess for those who come later. He is not oblivious to the fact that evil is a constant throughout history, and recognizes that those who were evil-minded in the late 19th Century just lacked the technological means to be as bad as later generations. Some of the book is social commentary: Si compares what he perceives as the happy, hopeful people of the late 19th century to the vapid, greedy people of the late 20th.

Si falls in love with Julia himself, and sets out to prove to all that Pickering is a villain and a scoundrel. He discovers that Jake is engaged to Julia, the niece of the house’s proprietress. Si moves into a boarding house, the better to scope out the object of his investigation, Jake Pickering. (As the author admits in an afterword, “Occasionally my efforts at accuracy became compulsive….”) Real photos and sketches from the time are included, with descriptions that at times invite the reader to begin scanning. The book limns, through Si’s eyes, old New York in painstaking detail.

Dissatisfied with his circumstances, he agrees, and soon is back in 1882 New York, trying to solve a mystery suggested by his friend Kate. Si Morley is recruited as a subject, and he must agree to abandon his current life with no questions asked even before finding out what the project is.

This science fiction novel, purportedly a “classic” published in 1970, describes a secret government project to travel back through time using mentation only.

Time and Again by Jack Finney