The title of the book is a reference to a sentence by French writer François Rabelais, who famously wrote in Pantagruel: "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives" ("la moitié du monde ne sait pas comment l'autre vit").
Two and a Half Men | Half Man Half Biscuit | Days of our Lives | Private Lives | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | Days of Our Lives | The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex | Half Moon Bay, California | Half-Life | Taking Lives | Half Moon Bay | Parallel Lives | Hancock's Half Hour | Half-Life (video game) | Taking Lives (film) | It Ain't Half Hot Mum | Half-Life 2 | The Lives of a Bengal Lancer | The Best Years of Our Lives | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (film) | Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide | Half Dome | Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley | The Murderer Lives at Number 21 | The Lives of Others | The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane | Sordid Lives | No One Lives | half-time | Half Ticket |
Jacob Riis, in his famous book about the underbelly of New York, How the Other Half Lives (1890), wrote of entering a Chinatown fan-tan parlor: "At the first foot-fall of leather soles on the steps the hum of talk ceases, and the group of celestials, crouching over their game of fan tan, stop playing and watch the comer with ugly looks. Fan tan is their ruling passion."
Public concern about New York tenements was stirred by the publication in 1890 of Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives.