Reading list · 12 books

How New York is governed

Books on how City Hall, Albany, housing, land use and street policy work, and how they got that way.

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Reference

New York City Politics (opens Bookshop.org)

Governing Gotham

Bruce F. Berg · 2007

Berg describes how the mayor, council, boroughs, unions and interest groups share power, with chapters on city, state and federal relations.
Reference

Governing New York State (opens Bookshop.org)

Robert F. Pecorella and Jeffrey M. Stonecash · 2012

A standard text on New York's constitution, governor, legislature, courts and budget, including how bills move in Albany.
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

City of Ambition (opens Bookshop.org)

FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York

Mason B. Williams · 2013

Williams shows how Mayor La Guardia and President Roosevelt built the city's public works, housing and labor policies in the 1930s, and how federal money changed city government.
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

Public Housing That Worked (opens Bookshop.org)

New York in the Twentieth Century

Nicholas Dagen Bloom · 2008

How the city's housing authority was built and managed from the 1930s, and why its early projects succeeded, according to Bloom.
The history

Affordable Housing in New York (opens Bookshop.org)

The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City

Nicholas Dagen Bloom and Matthew Gordon Lasner · 2016

An illustrated history of public, middle-income and other subsidized housing in the city from the 1920s to today.
The history

The Great Rent Wars (opens Bookshop.org)

New York, 1917-1929

Robert M. Fogelson · 2013

Fogelson writes about the first fights over rent regulation in New York, from the postwar housing shortage to the end of the emergency laws.
The argument

Zoned Out! (opens Bookshop.org)

Race, Displacement, and City Planning in New York City

Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse · 2016

Essays examine how rezonings have affected neighborhoods of color in the city and who has been displaced.
The history

Preserving New York (opens Bookshop.org)

Winning the Right to Protect a City's Landmarks

Anthony C. Wood · 2008

Wood recounts the fight to pass New York's 1965 landmarks law, and the loss of Pennsylvania Station that helped bring it about.
Reporting

Streetfight (opens Bookshop.org)

Handbook for an Urban Revolution

Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow · 2016

Sadik-Khan, the city's transportation commissioner from 2007 to 2013, describes the plazas, bike lanes and bus lanes she built and how she fought for them.
The argument

The Battle for Gotham (opens Bookshop.org)

New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs

Roberta Brandes Gratz · 2010

Gratz reports on community fights over highways, redevelopment and preservation since the 1960s, from a viewpoint close to Jacobs's.