Born in Flames The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
-
- Hardcover
- Taschenbuch
- eBook ausgewählt
-
Form:Einzelkauf Download
-
Sprache:Englisch
18,00 €
inkl. gesetzl. MwSt.Beschreibung
Produktdetails
Format
ePUB
Kopierschutz
Nein
Family Sharing
Nein
Text-to-Speech
Ja
Erscheinungsdatum
19.08.2025
Verlag
W. W. Norton & CompanySeitenzahl
368 (Printausgabe)
Dateigröße
30529 KB
Sprache
Englisch
EAN
9781324093527
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction
Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize for the Best Book in American History from the Society of American Historians
Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians
Winner of the New York City Book Award
Winner of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award
Winner of the Urban History Association's Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book in North American Urban History
Nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Nonfiction
Finalist for the Gotham Book Prize
Shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
The Skipped History Podcast Best Book of the Year
Revelatory.... Deeply researched and masterfully told. Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review
The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970sand its legacy today.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning! That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation's urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.
Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the most destructive fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentivesnew government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property valueslandlords hired torches, mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords.
Ansfield's book, based on a decade of research, introduces the term brownlining for the destructive insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. Ansfield shows that as the FIRE industriesfinance, insurance, and real estate eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began profoundly reshaping Black and Brown neighborhoods, seeing them as easy sources of profit. At every step, Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements that sprung up in the Bronx and elsewhere, as well as the explosion of popular culture around the fires, from iconic movies like The Towering Inferno to hit songs such as Disco Inferno. Ultimately, they show how similarly pernicious dynamics around insurance and race are still at play in our own era, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks.
Noch keine Bewertungen vorhanden
Verfassen Sie die erste Bewertung zu diesem Artikel
Helfen Sie anderen Kundinnen und Kunden durch Ihre Meinung.
Kurze Frage zu unserer Seite
Vielen Dank für Ihr Feedback
Wir nutzen Ihr Feedback, um unsere Produktseiten zu verbessern. Bitte haben Sie Verständnis, dass wir Ihnen keine Rückmeldung geben können. Falls Sie Kontakt mit uns aufnehmen möchten, können Sie sich aber gerne an unseren Kund*innenservice wenden.
zum Kundenservice