Kim phillips fein fear city morton
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She details all the last-minute machinations and backroom deals that solved the fiscal crisis…The interesting thing about the timing of this book is New York is in danger of losing federal funding for various reasons. Citing debt crises in Greece, Puerto Rico and Detroit, she notes that they argue that austerity is “the only option” to avoid municipal default.
Yet the city was indeed billions of dollars in the red, with no way to pay back its debts. With unions and ordinary citizens refusing to accept retrenchment, the budget crunch became a struggle over the soul of New York, pitting fundamentally opposing visions of the city against each other. And yet the city was billions of dollars--maybe twelve, maybe fourteen, no one even really knew how much--in the red.
This is the story of how the gears were shifted and the age of liberalism put into reverse, told with all the engrossing details, all the forgotten characters, and a memorable style.”
—Tom Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? Look in New York, and read Kim Phillips-Fein’s superb Fear City. Kim Phillips-Fein shows how New York became the testing ground for market-based responses to urban problems.
Extremely well written and impressively researched, Fear City is essential reading to understand how finance capital, real estate speculation, austerity budgeting, and punitive policing first came together to create the toxic politics of today.”
—Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia and Kissinger’s Shadow
“Fear City provides the definitive account of the moment when New York City liberalism ran out of momentum and money, and the conservative reaction that has culminated in Donald Trump began.
Lucid, elegantly written, full of new information, it belongs on the shelf of key books about the city, alongside The Power Broker, Gotham, and their like.”
—Joshua B. Freeman, author of American Empire and Working-Class New York
“This revealing narrative of New York’s transformation from working-class social democracy to the glittering home of fancy finance reminds us that behind the mask of austerity there always lurks a bitter politics of class.”
—James K.
Galbraith, author of The Predator State and Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice
“The story of New York’s financial crisis in the seventies is really a story about the role of cities in America today. New Yorkers pride themselves on being cosmopolitan, on welcoming immigrants, on being willing to spend money on education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
Aspects of this story reverberate into present dilemmas — on the local, state and national levels — as austerity measures take center stage as possible solutions to deficits and shortfalls.”
—Bowery Boys History
“Fear City is the best account of the New York City fiscal crisis of the 1970s and, more than that, an indispensable contribution to understanding the rise of austerity economics and the long decline of the public sector.
Here we can see the blueprint for what has since been done to the entire world. In this vivid, gripping account, historian Kim Phillips-Fein tells the remarkable story of the crisis that engulfed the city, forever transforming the largest metropolis in the United States and reshaping ideas about government throughout the country. If you want to find the roots of modern conservatism, don’t look in Louisiana, Arizona, or rural Wisconsin.
How could the capital of the financial world go bankrupt? This is a history with huge implications for the remaking of American politics and economics in our time.”
—Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Origins of the Urban Crisis
“Fair, thorough, incisive, and stylish, this is the best book to read not just on New York’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s, but about how bankers became our unacknowledged legislators ever since.”
—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge
“The remaking of New York City under cover of crisis was a prelude to what would become a global economic tidal wave.
Yet the city was indeed billions of dollars in the red, with no way to pay back its debts. Drawing on never-before-used archival sources as well as interviews with key players in the crisis, Phillips-Fein guides us through the hairpin turns and sudden reversals that brought New York City to the edge of bankruptcy–and kept it from going over.
At once a sweeping history of some of the most tumultuous times in the city’s past, a colorful portrait of the unwieldy mechanics of municipal government, and an origin story of the politics of austerity, Fear City is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the resurgent fiscal conservatism of today.
Praise & Reviews
Fear Cityis one of Kirkus Review’s Best American History Books for 2017
Fear City is an Amazon Best History Book for 2017
Fear City is one of Publisher’s Weekly’s top ten books for 2017
Fear City is a Publishers Weekly pick of the month
Fear Citywas named one of Amazon’s top ten best nonfiction books for April 2017!
Fear City excerpt in New Republic
Fear Cityis a Publishers Weekly Staff Pick
Fear City is one of the top 10 books featured on the radio program This Is Hell!
Feature in the Christian Science Monitor:When New York City stood on the brink
“A refreshingly counterintuitive point of view…this is a book that deserves an audience beyond New York City history buffs, and all the more so because of its relevance to our political moment.”
—New York Times Book Review
“President Gerald Ford’s reaction to New York City’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s was encapsulated by the classic Daily News headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” This analysis of the city’s precipitous slide toward bankruptcy focuses on the unique mix of Wall Street’s financial power and New York’s liberalism, factors that combined both to drive debt ever higher and to alienate great swaths of the country.
In doing so, she brings to life a radically different New York, the legendarily decrepit city of the 1970s.