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Gotham #3
Gotham at War: A History of New York City from 1933 to 1945
The culminating volume in the acclaimed Gotham series, Gotham at War delivers an unforgettable portrait of America's greatest city during history's most catastrophic conflict.
Gotham at War unveils the history of New York and the Second World War, from isolationism and factionalism to crucible of the American effort and the Allied Cause in a total and global war.
Kaleidoscopic and immersive, Gotham at War captures the full spectrum of New York and the war from every possible aspect-social, political, economic, and military. Even before the war had started street battles between New York's homegrown fascists and the workers' movement-allied with immigrants from all over the world and their children in the barrios of Gotham-played prelude. Set in the generation after race "scientists" based in the elite warrens of the Upper East Side championed and then imposed national immigration restriction, Gotham at War sees New Yorkers struggle to shake off the city's eugenic past.
Between 1933 and 1945, the city wrestled with itself, starting from the rise of Hitler through isolationism and growing interventionism; through Pearl Harbor and a full-throated war effort, when millions of American soldiers and sailors and billions of tons of materiel passed through New York's waterfronts to the warfronts. Along the way Mike Wallace's saga traces the transformation of New York, embracing garment workers and skyscrapers; the subway and Wall Street; gangsters and idealists; pols and reformers; nightclubs and boardrooms; Nazi infiltrators and FBI gumshoes; magazines and movies; shuls and cathedrals; every neighborhood, every industry, and all the peoples of the city swept up in a world that had caught fire.
Here is a portrait of a city and a war like no other. Gotham at War traces the transformation of New York from Depression-wracked mother of exiles to a front in the Second World War, and ultimately to the seat of the United Nations and a very contested "capital of the world."
Gotham at War unveils the history of New York and the Second World War, from isolationism and factionalism to crucible of the American effort and the Allied Cause in a total and global war.
Kaleidoscopic and immersive, Gotham at War captures the full spectrum of New York and the war from every possible aspect-social, political, economic, and military. Even before the war had started street battles between New York's homegrown fascists and the workers' movement-allied with immigrants from all over the world and their children in the barrios of Gotham-played prelude. Set in the generation after race "scientists" based in the elite warrens of the Upper East Side championed and then imposed national immigration restriction, Gotham at War sees New Yorkers struggle to shake off the city's eugenic past.
Between 1933 and 1945, the city wrestled with itself, starting from the rise of Hitler through isolationism and growing interventionism; through Pearl Harbor and a full-throated war effort, when millions of American soldiers and sailors and billions of tons of materiel passed through New York's waterfronts to the warfronts. Along the way Mike Wallace's saga traces the transformation of New York, embracing garment workers and skyscrapers; the subway and Wall Street; gangsters and idealists; pols and reformers; nightclubs and boardrooms; Nazi infiltrators and FBI gumshoes; magazines and movies; shuls and cathedrals; every neighborhood, every industry, and all the peoples of the city swept up in a world that had caught fire.
Here is a portrait of a city and a war like no other. Gotham at War traces the transformation of New York from Depression-wracked mother of exiles to a front in the Second World War, and ultimately to the seat of the United Nations and a very contested "capital of the world."
976 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2025
70 people are currently reading
3224 people want to read
About the author
Mike Wallace
6 books87 followersA graduate of Columbia University, Mike Wallace is Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, where he has taught since 1971, and director of the Gotham Center for New York City History. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 and is the founder, co-publisher and editor of the Radical History Review.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 28, 2025
For starters, this book is a TOME. I have a severe dislike of eBooks, but if you are at all inclined in that direction, this is one to get in eBook form.
Before I get into this, because I realize that I mostly recorded my gripes as I went along, I will say that this book is great at what it does, which is to touch on a bit of everything, give an overview of NYC during WW2, and provide names and organizations that interested people can dig into further.
This book is very comprehensive, in that it covers pretty much all aspects of life in NYC during WW2 and the years leading up to it as well as the contributions of prominent New Yorkers to the wider effort on the homefront, with a strong focus on policy/planning/organizations/politics and movements. Despite the size of the book, most things are covered only to a very shallow depth, so while it is comprehensive in some ways, in others it is simply a launching point for a deeper dive into subjects of interest. There are also allusions to things that are not explained at all. However, Wallace has an EXTENSIVE bibliography that interested people can dig into (or just start looking up names like I did). Wallace does clearly lay out his narrative, but it is stated according to his interpretation with little to no consideration of other possibilities or points of view.
The book is organized by subjects, so it does jump around in time. Usually, this is ok however there were a few chapters where it jumped around in time within the chapter, and this got very confusing.
My first gripe with this book is that it BADLY needs a list of acronyms. There are so many different organizations with 3 and 4 letter abbreviations, and it is impossible to keep them straight. Along with the long lists of names, there is no way I can remember what an acronym from 3 chapters ago stood for! There were even a few where I could not for the life of me figure out where they were introduced the first time.
One nice thing about this book is that there are photographs sprinkled throughout. Some of these didn't feel totally relevant and/or their relevance was never explained, such as a scene from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a photo of Marines practicing to abandon ship in a chapter about the Communist schism, and The Bid Duck in Flanders, Long Island. I'm wondering if Wallace picked more obscure pictures because he assumed his readers would already have seen the more famous ones, such as the Bund Rally in Madison Square Garden decorated with banners of George Washington, American Flags...and swastikas. I think some like that would have had a bigger impact on the audience, even if some of them have seen the photos before.
The book does give addresses for pretty much everything mentioned in the book. As a non-NYCer, this admittedly didn't mean a whole lot to me, but I imagine it would be interesting for locals.
The book does often bog down in lists of names and organizations and often felt like it was name dropping just for the heck of it. In some chapters, I felt like I was reading through the part of a corporation's "about us" website that gives the bios of their board of directors.
Wallace does make an attempt at turning this into a multicultural history, and succeeds where Black and Jewish people are concerned, but that's really it. Asians barely get a mention, and Latinos aren't mentioned until talking about the music scene and the Latin influence on it. Then they are forgotten again until a chapter on Puerto Rico and colonialism. Also, how is Adam Clayton Powell Jr "almost blond"?
Overall, while I have picked many nits here, this is a very good book, especially for anyone from NYC with an interest in local history. I picked up many interesting tidbits and came away with a better appreciation of the homefront in WW2.
Before I get into this, because I realize that I mostly recorded my gripes as I went along, I will say that this book is great at what it does, which is to touch on a bit of everything, give an overview of NYC during WW2, and provide names and organizations that interested people can dig into further.
This book is very comprehensive, in that it covers pretty much all aspects of life in NYC during WW2 and the years leading up to it as well as the contributions of prominent New Yorkers to the wider effort on the homefront, with a strong focus on policy/planning/organizations/politics and movements. Despite the size of the book, most things are covered only to a very shallow depth, so while it is comprehensive in some ways, in others it is simply a launching point for a deeper dive into subjects of interest. There are also allusions to things that are not explained at all. However, Wallace has an EXTENSIVE bibliography that interested people can dig into (or just start looking up names like I did). Wallace does clearly lay out his narrative, but it is stated according to his interpretation with little to no consideration of other possibilities or points of view.
The book is organized by subjects, so it does jump around in time. Usually, this is ok however there were a few chapters where it jumped around in time within the chapter, and this got very confusing.
My first gripe with this book is that it BADLY needs a list of acronyms. There are so many different organizations with 3 and 4 letter abbreviations, and it is impossible to keep them straight. Along with the long lists of names, there is no way I can remember what an acronym from 3 chapters ago stood for! There were even a few where I could not for the life of me figure out where they were introduced the first time.
One nice thing about this book is that there are photographs sprinkled throughout. Some of these didn't feel totally relevant and/or their relevance was never explained, such as a scene from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a photo of Marines practicing to abandon ship in a chapter about the Communist schism, and The Bid Duck in Flanders, Long Island. I'm wondering if Wallace picked more obscure pictures because he assumed his readers would already have seen the more famous ones, such as the Bund Rally in Madison Square Garden decorated with banners of George Washington, American Flags...and swastikas. I think some like that would have had a bigger impact on the audience, even if some of them have seen the photos before.
The book does give addresses for pretty much everything mentioned in the book. As a non-NYCer, this admittedly didn't mean a whole lot to me, but I imagine it would be interesting for locals.
The book does often bog down in lists of names and organizations and often felt like it was name dropping just for the heck of it. In some chapters, I felt like I was reading through the part of a corporation's "about us" website that gives the bios of their board of directors.
Wallace does make an attempt at turning this into a multicultural history, and succeeds where Black and Jewish people are concerned, but that's really it. Asians barely get a mention, and Latinos aren't mentioned until talking about the music scene and the Latin influence on it. Then they are forgotten again until a chapter on Puerto Rico and colonialism. Also, how is Adam Clayton Powell Jr "almost blond"?
Overall, while I have picked many nits here, this is a very good book, especially for anyone from NYC with an interest in local history. I picked up many interesting tidbits and came away with a better appreciation of the homefront in WW2.
December 13, 2025
While Mike Wallace's Gotham books are tremendously useful volumes of history, this is sadly the least accomplished of the trilogy -- despite so much rich information about the beginnings of modern New York. The chapters are much shorter and thus less pithier than the previous two volumes. Wallace widely gets out of Robert A. Caro's way in relation to Robert Moses, but he isn't nearly as rigorous on Mayor LaGuardia as I would have thought (I have since ordered two LaGuardia biographies to make up for Wallace's deficit). I think the problem here is that the first two Gotham volumes are so comprehensive, so perfect at picking a key period of time in which NYC truly developed, that the limited years of 1933 through 1945 really don't serve Wallace very well. In fact, the last 100 pages of this nearly leave New York behind as Wallace steers us through FDR and the end of World War II. And since this is apparently the last Gotham volume, any hope of Mike Wallace doing for New York City what Kevin Starr did so brilliantly for California is lost. Yes, there's a great deal of information here. And I know I'm sounding like I'm panning this rather than appreciating it. But what the hell happened here, Wallace? We're supposed to be BOGGED DOWN by your books, lost in rabbit holes. This one felt weirdly breezy. I'm not sure if it's because Wallace is in his eighties and has grown tired of all this or because he was instructed by the Oxford people to appeal to more ADD readers. It's worth reading -- don't get me wrong -- but this really should have been more like running the gauntlet.
December 28, 2025
Excellent journey through NYC before and during the war. It is encyclopedic but so well written that the stories are easy to retain.
November 18, 2025
Essential reading…
My parents entered adulthood in New York in this period and lived here during the War, both working as civilian employees of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Indeed, that’s how they met—on a telephone call in late 1943. They raised me (born 1951) to be part of their generation.
The events and participants portrayed in this hugely readable history cast their shadows to the present day. Indeed, the tendrils of the seeds that period planted in the region, nation, and world have grown into the good things and evils of today.
Learn history and apply its lessons, or bad history repeats itself.
My parents entered adulthood in New York in this period and lived here during the War, both working as civilian employees of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Indeed, that’s how they met—on a telephone call in late 1943. They raised me (born 1951) to be part of their generation.
The events and participants portrayed in this hugely readable history cast their shadows to the present day. Indeed, the tendrils of the seeds that period planted in the region, nation, and world have grown into the good things and evils of today.
Learn history and apply its lessons, or bad history repeats itself.
December 20, 2025
Too much detail----read about 00 ps
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews