Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

by Bench Ansfield

FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE



ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2025 • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2025 • THE SKIPPED HISTORY PODCAST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR



“[R]evelatory…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 1970s—and 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 incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords 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 industries—finance, 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, True Crime, American History, Crime, New York, Politics

359 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 19, 2025

Reviews

[Traci Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed. Well researched and written. Perfectly executed if not a tad dry.

[Sarah Schulman]

A necessary study that brings the remembered, experienced, and anecdotal into the realm of documented histories. Ansfield takes readers back to the transition from fire as urban protest to fire deliberately created by landlords to maximize insurance payouts- showing the direct experiences of victims, neighbors, torches, and poor communities- and how this collective experience was expressed in popular culture.. An important addition to the history of New York, urban studies, and previous works by Beryl Satter and Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor among others.

[Bea Masters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Racial capitalism! White collar crime! Hyper-local organizing! High drama in this niche history, all of which was news to me. It definitely had the vibe of a dissertation-turned-book in a fun hyperfixation “omg i can’t believe how much research they did” way.

I won a copy of this in a giveaway and put off reading it for months because it seemed like it would either be boring or traumatizing, but I’m glad i finally read it. Would recommend for folks who are interested in tenants’ rights, the origins of FAIR insurance plans, or how racial capitalism has impacted people across the US.

[Gabriella · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book that connects a lot of dots! Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City continues the stories started in the rest of my New York history reading series. The start of Bench Ansfield’s book runs concurrently to Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein, but continues on for the entirety of the 1970s arson wave and its aftermath. In some ways, it is a precursor to Jonathan Mahler’s book, The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City, 1986-1990, because while this book does not focus as much on the Bronx, it does highlight the impact of financialization on New York in the late 80s and early 90s—something Ansfield previews in the 70s. And of course, the ghost of Robert Moses hovers large over this entire story, particularly his demolition of East Tremont to construct the Cross-Bronx Expressway and his overconcentration of public housing in the South Bronx. This makes Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York another important companion to Born in Flames, among others. This book also has left me wanting to read more about the history of co-op city and the Grand Concourse. If anyone has recommendations, I would welcome them!

How it worked: literally
Like I said, Born in Flames is focused on the 1970s arson wave, particularly its causes within the insurance and real estate industries, as well as its impacts on the neighborhoods of the Bronx. Ansfield shares that while many people peg late 1960s riots and uprisings as the main cause of destruction in the urban core, the arson wave actually did way more damage—and for less moral purposes. Here’s the narrative Ansfield lays out:

Landlords would buy residential apartment buildings from local savings banks who were offloading them for super cheap as the Bronx transitioned from a white immigrant enclave, and began to experience mortgage and insurance discrimination. These new landlords would then defer all maintenance while milking as much from rent collection as possible. Then, after stripping all sorts of value from the building and its residents, the landlords would set fire to their buildings and collect insurance payouts. This was only possible because while the landlords were not keeping up with repairs, tax bills, or any other charges, they were keeping up with their insurance premiums, in expectation of this payout. Because of the tangled web of reinsurance, many of the insurance agencies didn’t even feel the cost of paying out premiums for years and years. Their eventual losses were hidden by the investment gains they made from raking in lots of new money through the premiums.

Fire and FIRE: the twin perils of the time
While the tenants were often blamed for the fires, Ansfield reveals that the blame really lied with the period’s growth of FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate.) Unlike the thousands of residents who lost their homes, landlords were incentivized under the new system to burn down these buildings. The value of the homes became separated from the provision of actual housing, or even the receipt of rental income. In other words, the endless and heartless commodification of housing requires people to see houses as convertible assets, rather than places to live. When you see it this way, you begin to realize that at certain times, you can make more value off burning people’s homes than preserving them. Ansfield says it best:

Across the 1970s, the policies sold by the NYPIUA came to have less and less of a direct relationship with the safety and well-being of their corresponding properties. In the growing space between the building and the policy, between the property and its protection, between the thing and the abstraction dwelled the tenants of the Bronx, stranded in the brownlined American city. (70)

Far from placing all of the blame on landlords themselves (though Ansfield is certainly not sympathetic to their destruction of people’s homes), Ansfield reveals how the growing specter of financialization allowed the insurance agencies to share in the profits of the arson wave, even as they paid out massive settlements. The companies hiked up premiums to pass on the losses, spread the risk across many industry peers through reinsurance schemes, and took payouts on the chin to avoid more costly lawsuits. This was only possible because their profits were no longer about the ratio of losses to premiums earned. They were about how much gains their investments could earn…like what they did with the cash sitting around from their premiums!!! They were no longer making money from selling insurance, they were making money from INVESTING the money from selling insurance. This critical shift had ruinous causes for many people in search of decent housing.

Brownlining = predatory inclusion
A lot of Ansfield’s work is about criticizing the New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association (NYPIUA), and how their desire to “correct” redlining in the insurance industry actually led to different problems (read: arson for profit.) While policymakers attempted to frame insurance access as a form of racial justice, it was clear that the broader austerity regime of 1970s New York could never be resolved by access to insurance coverage—particularly since the NYPIUA policies failed to provide any coverage for renters, who were the vast majority of Bronx residents impacted by the fires. If anything, this form of greater “access” just created more incentives for landlords to displace their tenants.

If you couldn’t get from what I’ve said so far, Born in Flames is a close bedfellow with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. They even have a similar opening focus on the riots and the Kerner Commission (which was well known but never implemented.) However, Ansfield expands from this focus to cover the Hughes Commission, a simultaneous report that was immediately implemented to support insurance “reform.” Unfortunately, by attempting to separate the insurance gap from all other systems of oppression and forms of industry discrimination, the result was the sort of predatory inclusion that Taylor focuses on in the mortgage sector.

Lastly, I appreciated how Ansfield looked back to the ruinous start of the insurance field—this is far from the first time insurers have profited off other people’s demise. Ansfield covers insurance’s role in the slave trade and hand-in-hand formation with racial capitalism, particularly when discussing secondary insurers like Lloyd’s of London.

Relevance for today
I’d like to close with the many ways that this book feels incredibly important for where we are now, particularly in the affordable housing world. First, 1970s professionals’ claims that insurance access necessitated insurance fraud and arson is the exact sort of false equivalency that we see today, with people claiming that there’s no way to provide deeply affordable housing that doesn’t lead to profiteering. As Ansfield notes, there are some truly troubling patterns—such as how today, many of these unresolved societal problems are transferred onto affordable housing operators, who cannot solve the entirety of systemic issues with a $10K/unit operating budget. (There’s actually been a lot of recent coverage about how this issue, particularly with rising insurance costs, is impacting affordable developers in New York!!! However, maybe this is just one of many reasons why it will NEVERRRR work for affordable housing to hinge on a profitable business model!!!

Chapter 8’s focus on “corrective capitalism” and how the fire-decimated neighborhoods were rebuilt through the private property path of community development corporations (CDCs) is also so essential to where the affordable housing world is today as an industry. We have seen how that approach couldn’t fully address the challenges in need for housing, but are failing to meaningfully support other alternatives. We see one such alternative, the sweat equity approach, modeled by the People’s Development Corporation, a Bronx community organization that pegged its ownership less on the private property model, and more on the concept of people’s contributions to repairing housing qualifying them as owners of the homes. I love this model, but also see Ansfield’s points of how it was quickly co-opted to show that the government didn’t “need” to provide ample support for affordable housing development.

On the other hand, the CDCs also often started as community groups, and weren’t always intended to become mega-landlords, but it’s partially because their approach to rebuilding was more easily co-opted by the “Black capitalism” forces that were powerful at the time. (Marcia Chatelain’s Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America explains how these forces simultaneously influenced another industry.) Basically, the CDCs offered corporate and government interests this off-ramp to the more structural demands of the 1960s and 1970s. They were like “don’t worry about ending capitalism, just help us build this thing!” And the businesses were like “no structural change, just building a building? We know how to do that!!! AND I get reputation laundering AND a tax haven? Sign me up!!” Ansfield notes this as a model for rehabilitating revolutionaries into developers who were rehabilitating buildings…a parallel that might be worth thinking about in our modern goals of creating an enabling environment for community ownership models.

There are many other things Ansfield covers that brought up questions for me, but since this review is long, I’m going to try and rapid-fire the rest of it. The Bronx nostalgia about the “good old days” of white immigrants calls to mind Brandi Thompson Summers’ focus on how planners, historians, and developers often manufacture respectable or partial neighborhood histories. This concept is masterfully discussed in her book Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City. Insurance companies are also heavily invested in the modern affordable housing world, as primary funders for many CDFIs, and even investors in LIHTC projects. NYCHA buildings were the only ones that weren’t impacted by the arson wave, because it wasn’t profitable to burn them. This runs contrary to the last several decades’ attack on public housing preservation and expansion. Ansfield notes that the greatest defense against arson was tenant and community organizing, which sometimes even led to building buy-outs and co-op conversion. Some of the groups deeply involved in these fights, like the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, are still active today, and supporting the formation of CLTs in New York. The resident groups also shaped the tax lien policies created by the City, even though these ended up paying out bankers (who got first dibs on settlements.) Either way, these groups continued to help the powers that be understand that arson was an economic problem, not a crime problem. Finally, I will end with a quote from Ansfield that will be important for me to remember as another sort of underwriter:

The history of insurance redlining and brownlining shows us that entering into an insurance contract is never a neutral act. Insurance is, at its core, an apparatus for spreading and sharing risks; industry judgments about which risks are pooled together, who receives what type of coverage, and at what rates they are covered are all political decisions. (86)

Final thoughts
I would highly recommend this book—it taught me so much!!! I did feel like it was longer than it needed to be, but I get that Ansfield wanted to be exhaustive, and show the aftermath as well as the advent of the arson waves. However, I think maybe a few less detours would’ve been appropriate—I found myself losing interest as a reader during the Lloyd’s of London controversy and the protests against the Fort Apache: The Bronx movie. But, I’m sure another reader would find these detours to be essential context-builders. And, I guess it’s all important in the end!!!

[Adamson Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh, was hoping for a more exciting history book but it was too soc-y

[Jim Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

LA times book award: History 2025.
The Blues remembered everything the country forgot. Gil Scott-Heron

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really surprised by the story that this book tells--which is really about my naivete and lack of education rather than that it is surprising.
This is the first book by a historian who debuts with a riveting and meticulous chronicle of the wave of arsons-for-profit that burned through America’s cities in the 1970s. The book focuses on the Bronx, which notoriously lost around 20% of its housing stock, though they argue that the borough is more of an example of a lesser-known arson epidemic that devastated neighborhoods of color across the country. Dispelling the racist myth that residents set the fires themselves, the author traces the confluence of financial factors that motivated absentee landlords to burn their neglected, deteriorating properties. These factors included high-cost, low-coverage state-sponsored insurance policies that debuted following the racial uprisings of the 1960s (when insurance companies abandoned riot-affected areas); insurance companies’ newfound practice of investing customer premiums for profit, which further inflated premiums to astronomical heights; and city budget cuts that decimated the FDNY. They chronicle not just the landlords who profited but also the tenants who, as they tracked the conflagrations’ block-by-block progress, fearfully went to bed with their shoes on; some were even burned out of more than one apartment. The book also unearths the tenant-organized activism, in collaboration with local officials and even some of the insurance companies themselves, that finally ended the fires. The result is an outstanding exposé of the predatory capitalist machinations behind the “Bronx is burning” saga.
This is not so much a page turner as a book that raises the level of awareness of exactly how bad slum lords treated their tenants and how they maximized profits.

[Daphne · Rating 5 out of 5]

serious contender for the best book i’ve read all year

[Cas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, really fascinating! I had never heard of the Bronx fires but I sure knew capitalism sucked - it was an insane read.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of history we were not taught in schools. I was so naive about so many things!

[Eli]

Stunning book. I especially liked the chapter detailing the "triangle trade in risk," connecting arson rings in NYC to UK aristocrats, florida middlemen and reinsurers in Brazil. Ansfield shows us what the lofty heights of global finance have to do with a teenager lighting a match in the Bronx.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the wake of the 1967 riots in US cities Congress passed a law authorizing residual property insurance companies ("Fair Plans") in states. It was clear that that insurance companies were redlining predominantly black urban areas. The Fair Plans were required to issue policies to any eligible applicant regardless of the property location.

The Plans were successful in providing insurance access in many states. (Disclosure, I worked for the Massachusetts Fair Plan for 30 years.)

This book is about a very serious unintended consequence of the Fair Plans. In Bronx, New York unscrupulous property owners bought up distressed properties for small amounts. They insured them at much higher amounts with the New York Fair Plan, "NYPIUA", and then burned them in an arson for profit scheme.

The scope of the arson damage in the Bronx in the late 1970s is mind boggling. The Bronx lost 20% of its housing stock between 1970 and 1981. Whole blocks were burnt in the South Bronx. The area became the symbol for urban decay in the 1970s America.

Ansfield, in this deeply researched and well written books makes several important points.

First, the media and politicians at the time argued that the Bronx was burning because of fires set by black residents. There was even a theory it was being done to get welfare benefits. Ansfield is appropriately outraged that the victims were blamed for the crimes. The fires were intentionally set by organized gangs of wealthy, predominantly white, property owners who were defrauding insurance companies, and gave no thought to the lives and property of their tenants.

Second, he blames NYPIUA and the insurance industry for creating the conditions that lead to the arson. He argues the Fair Plan policies were expensive and subpar. He says that the rest of the market used the existence of the Fair Plan as an excuse to completely withdraw from those markets. He criticizes the Fair Plan for over insuring properties which can be a motive for arson.

I was somewhat confused by the arguments. The fact that the insurance was expensive would make arson less profitable. The policy didn't have liability or theft coverage, but that would not affect the decision to burn the property. The over-insurance argument is difficult to evaluate. Standard polices require an insurer to provide replacement cost coverage. This is particularly important in a Fair Pan since the goal is having damaged homes repaired and not abandoned.

Several years after the fair Plan was created a Lloyds Syndicate from England began using a Miami broker to back policies in the Bronx that were much less expensive than the NYPIUA policies. Many property owners in the Bronx switched to them and then burned their property. Ansfield tells the interesting story of how those policies where reinsured by a Brazilian reinsurer. The reinsurer refused to pay because the broker committed fraud. The Lloyds "names" became personally responsible. They filed suit against Lloyds, which was an unimaginable thing. It ended up causing a fundamental change in how Lloyds operates. The story is fascinating, and it is a very good look into the huge global world of insurance, but it is something of a digression from the main story.

My takeaway from the Lloyds story is that the arson continued, if not increased, when the price of policies was lowered, so NYPIUA's high prices didn't seem to be a cause.

Ansfield is telling this story in order to make a broad point about the effects of the financialization of the world economy. He argues that by the 1970s insurance companies viewed premiums as a source of funds to use in their investment portfolios. Paying claims and making underwriting profits was a secondary concern. As a result, the industry moved away from its traditional commitment of fighting arson and became less rigorous about investigating claims.

Eventually the arson subsided. Ansfield argues that tenant activism finally prompted governmental and industry action. The NYPIUA became active in fighting arson, as did the industry in general. The Bronx DA, Mario Merola, eventually made arson a priority. Probably the biggest factor was that property values started to go back up in the Bronx. It doesn't make sense to burn your property if you can sell it at a substantial profit.

This is a well told story. At times it bogs down in some of Anfield's theorizing. He clearly wants this to be seen as an example of the inherent flaws in our economic system. I lean more towards seeing it as a case of unintended consequences leading to tragic results.

[Ruthajoy]

I’m about to be obsessed with insurance and the 1970s in a way that will be concerning to my loved ones. But the disco playlist will be worth it.

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject, super repetitive and somewhat full of tangents, like a bunch of PhD thesis chapters that got knit together to make a book.

[Sian · Rating 5 out of 5]

i never thought that i could be so captivated by a book on insurance! bench’s pen is masterful and approaches the lived experiences of Black and Brown bronxites during the burning years with empathy and precision.

read for my black geographies course and Bench joined the course for a q&a which was delightful!

[Shana Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Going into this with almost no knowledge of the insurance industry, economics, or Community Development Corporations, this whole book was very eye-opening (though occasionally over my head). Really well-written and organized, it felt very coherent throughout, and really painted a picture of both the problems and the solutions to the complex landlord arson mess of the 1970s.

[Rebecca Montague · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly interesting look at arson for profit in the 1970s. It’s causes, impact, and how it developed the Bronx we know today

[Nick Rabkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply researched and well-told story of how the housing market and the insurance industry orchestrated the burning of thousands of buildings and the displacement of 300,000 people in the Bronx. One angle into the nature of the housing crisis in American cities. Essential book for that.

[Brent Michaels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this! I learned so much about a unique and niche era of New York City history and this completely shifted my perspective on the topic. The author dives deep into arson and the conditions that precipitated and proliferated its destructive force.

The book argues that contrary to the dominant narrative, arson in the Bronx was incentivized by the insurance framework put in place under the guises of racial justice, expanding access to insurance in areas previously redlined. However, the premium terms were discriminatory and the coverage significantly overvalued properties which encouraged landlords to torch their buildings and collect their barely scrutinized payouts rather than collect rents. It’s well researched and extremely compelling and clear.

After establishing the alternative narrative, the book then took a look at how the dominant narrative harmed the residents of the Bronx in their lives and in their depiction in media. It tells the story of community organizing and response that ultimately provided the political pressure to change the system. The author links the organizing movements with many later movements.

This was so interesting and has inspired me to find similar books that tackle NYC history and use research to dispel the dominant narrative.

[OutsideOfTheTrack · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Fascinating, But a Little Too Much Like a Research Paper

This felt more like a research paper than a book at times, which definitely made it feel dry, but you could also tell just how well researched it was.

I did the audiobook of this, which came up as a recommendation from my library on Libby. I’m just a bit too young to remember this but too old to have learned about it in school — if schools would even teach about this — so I was pretty new to this whole intersection of capitalistic greed, the “best intentions” when it came to helping insure these neighborhoods, and the general social constructs around race and housing during the 1970s, all wrapped up in a true crime arson story.

It was an interesting topic, and an important one, but I just think the delivery needed a little work. I’m glad I listened to it, though, because I definitely learned a lot.

[Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really excellent, deeply researched, and engaging. This book presents a coherent argument that walks through the finer points of insurance regulation and urban development policy, connecting the dots to racial capitalism in a powerful way. Not an easy feat! Also, this is a really textbook example of incorporating contemporary pop culture to support the argument, in a way that I've seen a lot of similar academic non-fiction flub. Lots of great NYC details from the 1970s, too.

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh really wanted to like it, but this book was disappointing. I think the basic argument is probably correct, but one wouldn't know from reading the book. So much time is spent surveying various secondary symptoms and reactions while the core argument is still twisting in the wind. The writing is repetitive and overwrought. And new "concepts" (really just new terms) are introduced even though they serve no real analytical purpose.

[Avigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't gotten to read the whole thing yet but as a friend of the author, I've been following their work for years and know what a brilliant, heartbreaking and important work this is.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the best books I’ve read that I would also describe as, at times, incredibly boring.

[Park Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

w o w. really essential for anyone interested in american urbanism, NYC, systemic racism… blew my mind and explained SO MUCH. i was born in early 80s and have lived in “bombed out” blocks with more vacant lots than houses. red lining explained some of it, crack epidemic / prison industrial complex explained a bit more, and this really filled in a lot of gaps for me. thank you! such an important book and really well written, does the topic justice.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be the most fascinating book you ever read about insurance.

[Rob1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

How poor government policy and capitalism combine to create an inferno.

[Marie Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those of us who lived in the Bronx during the 1970s, this book will have special meaning. The insurance industry and greedy landlords wreaked havoc on poor people. Eye opening and disturbing.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely dense

This is not a light reading book, both in topic and content. It is a thought provoking topic and important for everyone to understand evolution from red lining to brown lining. But not an easy book to get through.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had heard a lot of buzz about Bench Ansfield's book "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City", so I thought I would give it a read. I was really taken aback because this is about a subject that I knew absolutely nothing about. I had read about and was familiar with the old concept of redlining that banks use to employ. However, I had not ever heard about brown lining and the role that insurance companies played, complicity even, with the banks as they segregated the American city.

Now, the subject of insurance is not all that interesting and discussing the ins and outs of risk analysis that companies like Lloyd's of London use, is even less so. However, Ansfield does a good job in bringing the subject to life. It is at the very heart of why so many cities across the US experienced urban decay in the 1970's. Ansfield recognizes that urban decay happens in many places, but as a main example, Ansfield focuses on the Bronx, that New York City borough with such a checkered history with regard to systemic racism.

That building owners use to routinely, as a matter of course, set their own buildings on fire to collect the insurance money, is just stunning to me. That insurance companies paid out the claims with little to no investigation, is even more so. The business of arson, that Ansfield writes about, was part and parcel of life in New York City in the 1970's. So many sections of the book left me aghast, I cannot imagine what it was like to live that life day to day. The book deserves the accolades it has received.