Reading list · 13 books

Crisis and comeback

Books on the fiscal crisis, the fires, the crime decline, September 11 and the years of rebuilding.

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The history

Fear City (opens Bookshop.org)

New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics

Kim Phillips-Fein · 2017

The 1975 near-bankruptcy, the bankers, unions and officials who negotiated the rescue, and the austerity that followed, from Phillips-Fein.
The history

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning (opens Bookshop.org)

1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City

Jonathan Mahler · 2005

Mahler weaves the Yankees, the mayoral race, the July blackout and the Son of Sam murders into one account of the summer of 1977.
The history

The Fires (opens Bookshop.org)

How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City

Joe Flood · 2010

Flood describes how a RAND-designed model led to fire company closures in the Bronx and Brooklyn, and the fires of the 1970s that followed.
The history

The Ungovernable City (opens Bookshop.org)

John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York

Vincent J. Cannato · 2001

Lindsay's two terms as mayor in the 1960s, including the strikes, riots and budget fights that tested city government, in Cannato's biography.
The history

Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City (opens Bookshop.org)

Jonathan Soffer · 2010

Soffer writes about Koch's three terms as mayor from 1978, when he steered the city out of the fiscal crisis and started a large housing program.
The history

Can't Stop Won't Stop (opens Bookshop.org)

A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Jeff Chang · 2005

Chang traces hip-hop from Jamaican sound systems and the 1970s Bronx, and the role of urban renewal and disinvestment in the culture that came out of it.
The history

The City That Became Safe (opens Bookshop.org)

New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control

Franklin E. Zimring · 2012

Zimring, a criminologist, examines the decline in New York's crime rate after 1990 and tests which explanations hold up.
Memoir

Turnaround (opens Bookshop.org)

How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic

William Bratton and Peter Knobler · 1998

Bratton, NYPD commissioner in the mid-1990s, describes the strategies and internal fights behind the department's crime reduction.
Reporting

102 Minutes (opens Bookshop.org)

The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers

Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn · 2005

Two New York Times reporters reconstruct minute by minute what happened inside the towers on September 11, from interviews and phone records.
Reporting

City in the Sky (opens Bookshop.org)

The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center

James Glanz and Eric Lipton · 2003

Glanz and Lipton, New York Times reporters, cover the towers' planning, construction and politics, and their destruction.
Reporting

Sixteen Acres (opens Bookshop.org)

Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero

Philip Nobel · 2005

Nobel reports on the years of design and political fights over rebuilding the World Trade Center site.
Reporting

Superstorm (opens Bookshop.org)

Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy

Kathryn Miles · 2014

Miles traces the storm's path from the Caribbean to the Northeast coast, with New York City's flooding and blackouts a central part.
The history

High Line (opens Bookshop.org)

The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky

Joshua David and Robert Hammond · 2011

The two founders of Friends of the High Line tell how a neighborhood group saved an abandoned rail viaduct and turned it into a park.