New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation

by Thomas Dyja

A lively, immersive history by an award-winning urbanist of New York City’s transformation, and the lessons it offers for the city’s future.

Dangerous, filthy, and falling apart, garbage piled on its streets and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble; New York’s terrifying, if liberating, state of nature in 1978 also made it the capital of American culture. Over the next thirty-plus years, though, it became a different place—kinder and meaner, richer and poorer, more like America and less like what it had always been.

New York, New York, New York , Thomas Dyja’s sweeping account of this metamorphosis, shows it wasn’t the work of a single policy, mastermind, or economic theory, nor was it a morality tale of gentrification or crime. Instead, three New Yorks evolved in turn. After brutal retrenchment came the dazzling Koch Renaissance and the Dinkins years that left the city’s liberal traditions battered but laid the foundation for the safe streets and dotcom excess of Giuliani’s Reformation in the ‘90s. Then the planes hit on 9/11. The shaky city handed itself over to Bloomberg who merged City Hall into his personal empire, launching its Reimagination. From Hip Hop crews to Wall Street bankers, D.V. to Jay-Z, Dyja weaves New Yorkers famous, infamous, and unknown—Yuppies, hipsters, tech nerds, and artists; community organizers and the immigrants who made this a truly global place—into a narrative of a city creating ways of life that would ultimately change cities everywhere.

With great success, though, came grave mistakes. The urbanism that reclaimed public space became a means of control, the police who made streets safe became an occupying army, technology went from a means to the end. Now, as anxiety fills New Yorker’s hearts and empties its public spaces, it’s clear that what brought the city back—proximity, density, and human exchange—are what sent Covid-19 burning through its streets, and the price of order has come due. A fourth evolution is happening and we must understand that the greatest challenge ahead is the one New York failed in the first three: The cures must not be worse than the disease.

Exhaustively researched, passionately told, New York, New York, New York is a colorful, inspiring guide to not just rebuilding but reimagining a great city.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, New York, Cities, Politics, Urbanism, Audiobook

544 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2021

About the author

I've written three novels and two works of non-fiction before THE THIRD COAST. I've also worked as an editor, book packager, and many years as a bookseller in Chicago, New York, and Boston. I currently live in Manhattan with my wife and daughter, who's in high school; my son is away at college.

Reviews

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I found this book interesting, it is not for everyone. The author assumes that the reader is a New York City recent history aficionado as he talks about several different people, some of whom are well known and some only to those into New York City. The latter will leave some readers scratching their heads or constantly googling for more information on the individuals. My recommendation is that this book is for those who are really into New York City. If you are not, you will most likely not finish the book.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up the audiobook after reading the favorable review in the New York Times. I'm a fan of New York City, having lived there for eleven years from 1976-1987 (during the first period of time covered by this book) and have been back many times. But the things I like most about NYC didn't make it into this book.

I gave the book two stars because, despite the fact that I developed a strong dislike for both the book and the author while listening to the narration by Jacques Roy, there were some impressive aspects to the book.

The inside City Hall stuff is very good. Despite the many years to be covered, the coverage of policy and the various mayors' administrations is well done. The book is subjective, as large portions of the text consist of the author's opinions (mixed feelings on Koch, considered Dinkins incompetent, disliked Rudy, loved Bloomberg, loathed DeBlasio), but there is good detail on financial matters, policy toward business and growth, changes that Koch made (like appointing competent department heads) that brought about immediate improvements, and the use of technology to improve various departments, particularly the Police Department. Some of the recurring themes - the importance of networks, the increasing dependence of the city on Wall Street and tech, the ever rising use of public-private partnerships to manage areas (such as parks) formerly exclusively managed by the city government - are important, and the discussion is enlightening. The author did a lot of research, though one might think that it mostly consisted of reading back issues of New York Magazine, because it seems to be cited on almost every other page.

The book also has many weaknesses. One is that the author mostly forgets that New York City is more than just Manhattan. There are occasional discussions about happenings in Brooklyn (mostly in the sections closest to Manhattan and mostly having to do with the development of Manhattan-style towers), but the other boroughs are pretty much ignored.

And it isn't just the "other boroughs" that get short shrift in this book, it is "other people" who are overlooked as well. The entire book is written from the viewpoint of a well-off white person who lives in Manhattan.

When Queens makes its first appearance in Chapter 10, its residents are referred to as suburbanites. Queens is not a suburb. It is the most ethnically diverse county in the United States and the most linguistically diverse place in the world. There are thousands of stories to be told of people who have traveled from all over the world to live in New York City. But none of that made it into the book. While the author quotes some statistics on the percentage of immigrants living in the city as a whole, we never meet any of these people or learn anything about their lives. They may as well be invisible to the author, who is too busy telling us about the celebrities at Elaine's or quoting something from New York Magazine. This is a huge oversight in a book about a city that has been transformed by a tremendous influx of immigrants.

The Bronx is similarly neglected. It serves a purpose akin to its role as a symbol in political campaigns, first of urban blight, then of housing revitalization. But its residents are silent and anonymous in this book. Staten Island gets one mention, in connection with a referendum on leaving the city. Perhaps the author thought that the referendum was successful, because Staten Island then disappears from the book.

When New York Magazine was cited over and over again, I wondered why we never heard anything that was being written in media covering minority communities. How about a quote from the Amsterdam News once in a while? The author is careful to note that the big exodus of black people from Harlem began long before white gentrifiers moved in (thus apparently absolving them of blame for the departures), but he never tells us what happened to those people. What happened to them? Where did they go and what were their lives like? What happened to the ethnic groups, like the Greeks in Astoria, when the urban professionals moved in? When Bushwick was transformed from a neighborhood on the edge to a yuppie paradise, what happened to its former residents? You won't find answers here.

One of the problems was the great length of time covered by the book. It is impossible to cover issues in depth when you have 40 years to cover in 500 pages. The treatment of events that said a lot about how New Yorkers of different races viewed one another, like the Central Park jogger incident and the shootings by Bernhard Goetz, are rushed, with no meaningful discussion. Even the discussion of 9/11 is surprisingly brief. Issues faced by poor people are briefly acknowledged, but never discussed. Again, this is a very narrowly focused book, directed at white Manhattanites.

Pretty much all issues are approached from a Manhattan-centric viewpoint. If you read the book, you'll probably think that New York City has only two parks, Central Park and Bryant Park. It has hundreds. Central Park is only the fifth largest park in the city. But I imagine that Central Park and Bryant Park are the two places where a white guy from Manhattan was likely to spend time, so that's what we hear about. The treatment is similar with respect to other facets of city life. On transit, you get a bit about the Second Avenue line. You don't hear about the 63rd street tunnel and the Archer Avenue line, which combined to relieve tremendous congestion on the E and F lines from Queens. For people in the outer boroughs, that was important and it would have been interesting to learn how it all came about.

Income inequality is a huge issue in New York City, but it gets surprisingly little attention in this book. The author occasionally mentions that not everyone was doing as well as the Wall Street brokers and hedge fund owners with whom he is preoccupied, but there is no follow-up. New York is an expensive place to live. How does the working class - the restaurant workers, the messengers, the people who clean the office towers - get by in a city where it costs $2000 to rent a one-bedroom apartment and $800,000 to buy that apartment? There are no answers in this book. Occasionally the author will talk about things that "everybody" was doing - buying real estate, holing up in their apartments when the city seemed unsafe, switching from East Village art galleries to Williamsburg galleries. But "everybody" isn't everybody. It's well-off white people.

The author tries to portray himself as "cool" by posing as a devotee of hip-hop and edgy art, like that of Jean-Michel Basquiat or random graffiti artists. It's great that he knows who Jay-Z and Puff Daddy are, and it is probably wonderful that a 58-year-old white man who otherwise can't find space in his book about New York City to write about the lives of immigrants and minorities who constitute the majority of the city's population has an abiding love for music made mainly by and for African-Americans. But I'm not convinced. I think they're in the book because they're famous. Maybe they've even been to Elaine's.

There is an epilogue at the end of the book that should have been chopped off. In a few short pages, the author tries to cover the entire administrations of Bill DeBlasio and Andrew Cuomo, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Covid-19 crisis. It was a bit too much to bite off and the discussion is mostly worthless. Both DeBlasio and Cuomo (those interlopers from the outer boroughs) get harsh treatment from the author, particularly DeBlasio, who is blasted on issues, like neglect of public housing and stop-and-frisk, that were also going on when Bloomberg, whom the author admires, was mayor. At the very end, the author spends a few pages lecturing us about how to be good city citizens. I didn't really need the lecture.

I think that the author missed a lot of what New York City is all about. Aside from the glitz and the money and the tourism, it is a city of neighborhoods and people of innumerable ethnic backgrounds, difficult lives and interesting stories. If the author decides to write about New York again, my suggestion is that he put the New York magazines away and spend some time walking the neighborhoods. We'd all benefit.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was recommended by Bill Goldstein of WNBC's Weekend Today in New York and then a friend was reading it, so I picked up a copy. I heard the author on the NYT Book Review podcast and then I attended a Zoom pop-up book group with him. So well-written and thoroughly researched, this book covers my adulthood in NYC. (I am an outer borough girl who left for college and came back). He covers it all through the Mayors: Beame (briefly), Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani, and Bloomberg. In the epilogue, DiBlasio is addressed. There are so many details, some of which I never knew or may have forgotten. This is a love story to the city, but not always that early rush of blind infatuation. Rather, Thomas Dyja, who arrived in 1980 and has only left briefly, presents the good, the bad and the ugly sides of New York. He gives the residents their due, acknowledging how hard it can be to live here day to day. And how much harder it has become for anyone not among the highest wage earners. This is a must read if you like or love New York!

[Moritz Mueller-Freitag · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York, New York, New York is an engrossing, wide-angled account of the personalities, policies, and cultural developments that have shaped Gotham over the last forty years. One of the real challenges of writing about New York is finding a language that does justice to this high-powered city. NYx3 is a stellar achievement in this regard. Thomas Dyja’s dazzling, propulsive prose captures the ebullience and vivacity of New York brilliantly. The whole book pulsates with New York-style energy; in fact, it reads very much like a subway express train blasting through the underground of Manhattan. I found it to be as absorbing and evocative as Robert Caro’s The Power Broker.

Dyja identifies three distinct phases in New York’s remarkable trajectory as it was coming out of the dirty and decrepit 1970s. The first phase, Renaissance, began with the election of the voluble Ed Koch in 1977 and continued throughout the 1980s. Under Koch’s leadership, the city regained its financial footing, entered into a construction boom that gave us Trump Tower, and cruised through the greedy yuppie era of Bonfire of the Vanities. The Reagan years failed to provide a path to shared prosperity, though, which meant that New York was splitting apart economically. Meanwhile, the scourge of AIDS, crack, and crime tore at the fabric of the city. The failures of leadership under one-term Mayor David Dinkins created the pre-conditions for the second phase in New York’s evolution – the safe streets and dotcom excesses of Rudy Giuliani’s Reformation. Then came 9/11, which left many New Yorkers disoriented and receptive to a new mayoral agenda. Terrorism and dotcom recession set the stage for the city’s third iteration: Michael Bloomberg’s controversial Reimagination of New York as a “Luxury City” for the conspicuous consumer. This vision has survived the two mediocre terms of the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio.

According to Dyja, New York’s passage through Renaissance, Reformation, and Reimagination has resulted in “a city flush with cash and full of poor people, diverse but deeply segregated, hopeful yet worryingly hollow underneath the shiny surface.” To be fair, New York is in many ways a better place than forty years ago, even when taking into account Covid-19: it has become richer, cleaner, greener, safer, and generally better groomed. Crucial to the city’s comeback were the 3.6 million immigrants who have come through since 1978 (1.5 million of whom have stayed). But problems of affordability have left the people of New York fragmented. Today, more than 20% of New Yorkers are “severely rent-burdened”, which means they pay at least half of their income on rent. Another 20% spend a third of their income or more on housing. The story of New York is, thus, a tale of two cities – one rich beyond measure, the other increasingly unable to make ends meet. Much has been lost:

“The city of our memories, that thrilling cesspool where anything could happen,… that city seemed to have slipped under a sea of gold. The rich were no longer rich; they were imperial. Chain stores devoured mom and pops. Camp had been domesticated; rage, sex, and high art defanged, rents out of reach, the N.Y.P.D. an army. Hip Hop was mainstream, but the Twin Towers were nowhere to be found. Depending on your mood, your age, your bank account, New York was now horrifying, or wonderful, and even that changed day-to-day, moment-to-moment.”

To his credit, Dyja doesn’t jump to easy conclusions. He looks at the city from all viewpoints, which allows him to get past the binaries, buzzwords, and truisms that tend to shape our discussion of urban transformation. His book hammers home the point that it wasn’t a single policy, person, or party that can be credited with or faulted for New York’s metamorphosis. Instead, it was a combination of structural changes in the economy and inflexible policy choices that were applied to a place in constant flux.

By the late 1970s, New York had begun to successfully reinvent itself as a post-industrial, knowledge-driven economy. While this allowed the city to enjoy years of high growth, it also made it vulnerable to the booms and busts of the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate). Over the decades, New York became stronger and more prosperous, neighborhoods gentrified, property values skyrocketed, but the benefits didn’t trickle down to all sectors of the urban economy. Wealth became more and more concentrated among a smaller cohort of New Yorkers. These structural shifts were amplified by policies that were put in place to help, but which often harmed those who were most vulnerable: Jane Jacobs-style urban preservation turned into hyper-gentrification; article 421-a of the property tax code induced landlords to add “poor doors” to luxury buildings; and proactive policing escalated into stop-and-frisk, which disproportionately targeted young men of color. Meanwhile, the housing emergency left more than 60,000 homeless. All of this didn’t happen overnight; it was decades in the making and the consequences were often unintended.

The transition from industrial capitalism to a knowledge-based economy also changed the inner workings of New York. A recurring theme throughout the book is how people build networks and connect in cities. Those of you who have read The Power Broker will recall that the old New York was governed by a complex power pyramid that saw Robert Moses and the Rockefeller family ruling at the top. Caro’s tome includes a wonderful chapter, titled Leading Out the Regiment, which describes all the city’s economic interests that formed the base of this pyramid: the bankers, the union leaders, the politicians, the Catholic Archdiocese, and so on. Through the power and money of his public authorities, Moses was able to mobilize these interests into a unified force that he could corrupt and control. This is not how the city ticks today. Dyja argues that over the past half-century, New York has evolved from a city of networks into a networked city that works much like a giant brain:

“Until the ’70s, political scientists described New York as a game played by all its interests with City Hall as the referee. But as Information took over from Industry, the collective world of unions, borough machines, the archdiocese, and even the Mob gradually gave way to one of individuals who define themselves primarily by the networks they belong to… Those with the most connections—and therefore the most access to favors, advice, job tips, and string pulling—shone the brightest… Those without wide connections, or with none at all, were left behind.”

Cities exist to let people form networks, but there is also a darker side to the impetus of humans to connect: social networks are inherently unfair and exclusionary. The reality is that birds of a feather flock together, whether that is yuppies in the 1980s or techies today. In addition, the denser and more high functioning your network, the more financial and social capital accrues to you over time. The same is true vice versa: less density and failing institutions translate into a more fragile community with fewer ties to the rest of the city. This insight holds one of the keys to why New York has split apart: “Wealth in New York does trickle down, but not in a rational, even shower of largesse; it travels through networks of Who You Know—who’s your hairdresser, your wallpaper guy, your dermatologist?—while leaving out those who aren’t in networks.”

Another transformation that profoundly impacted New York was the increasing use of business principles to run City Hall. Back in the 1970s, the city had lost control not just because of debt, but also because it had failed to computerize its accounting. The budget was completely unauditable and no one at City Hall knew how many people the city employed. Koch had to make the place function again. With the help of the bi-annual Mayor’s Management Report, he improved accountability and began managing for results, thereby changing the mayor’s job into something closer to a CEO’s. In the early 2000s, the Bloomberg administration took this approach to a whole new level by pioneering what Julian Brash has called the Bloomberg Way. This technocratic approach to urban governance envisioned the mayor as CEO, businesses as clients, citizens as consumers, and the city itself as a product that is branded and marketed as a luxury good. The results were a mixed bag. By casting New York as a private corporation, Bloomberg succeeded in making City Hall more entrepreneurial and innovative, but he was unable to serve the interests of the city as a whole. When he left office in 2013, the homeless shelter population had grown by 61% and a staggering 85% of New Yorkers complained that the city had become too expensive to live in.

In Dyja’s view, a fourth evolution of New York is now imminent. The pandemic, the economic and fiscal fallout, as well as movements for racial justice are forcing this change. So does the mayoral election in November. Post-Covid New York needs economic growth more than ever, but it also needs what Dyja calls citymaking: the active, daily participation of its citizens to reenergize the city and make it more inclusive. He believes that too many New Yorkers have become passive consumers of urban life and that democracy demands more of us than just voting, shopping, and complaining. His prescriptions invoke the spirit of the great urbanist Jane Jacobs, who said: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

While I agree with the general premise of Dyja’s proposals, they are too abstract to offer guidance on a practical level. This is a clear shortcoming of an otherwise excellent book. To me, the real leverage lies not in grassroots movements but in further refining the Bloomberg Way. In the Information Age, the government must urgently evolve from a monolithic service provider to an entrepreneurial system that steers instead of rows. As the former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, once put it, “it is not government’s obligation to provide services, but to see that they’re provided.” I personally share Michael Bloomberg’s belief that City Hall should be accountable to its customers, rather than to internal bureaucracies, for the results it delivers. It’s just that tourists and foreign oligarchs are not the only customers of New York, and that the amount of tax revenue a city generates can’t be the only measure of success. Bloomberg’s overwhelming focus on global competitiveness came at the cost of distributional considerations. The incoming mayor would do well to correct this deficiency.

[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the front half of this book even more fascinating than the later decades. I love New York, especially the late 70’s when it was a completely different city bursting with the arts and creativity. Those are the years I would visit my grandmother in Brooklyn regularly. We would go into Manhattan, to shop at cool little record stores, bloomingdales and some famous bar overlooking the water where I would get Shirley Temples and chat with the bartender (at like 8 years old.. it was the 70’s) So many good memories. The transformation of the city is spectacular and the author makes a point of showing what not just what politicians can do for change but the citizens themselves when they take action and get involved. No hibernating. I will probably read another book now on New York that starts in the very beginnings to the 70’s. I’m sure there’s a ton of those types of books out there.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is hard to categorize.
It's definitely not a history of NYC.
It has analysis, but its not really a social commentary.
It uses the four main mayorties of the time period, but doesn't dwell on them.
I guess its mostly an urban memoir with large doses of nostalgia.

An earlier review mentioned that if you aren't from New York, Its rough and you will be constantly referring to Wikipedia for fairly arcane NYC details. I couldn't agree more.

I'm not a NYC obsessionist by any stretch, but I have gotten most of my news from NYC sources for my whole life and that was enough of a background to make this book highly enjoyable. I'm a little younger than Dyja, who must be around 60, but my frame of reference is similar.

He starts with Ed Koch and works his way progressively through Bloomberg (with a Diblasio epilogue). Dyja probably spends more time than I wanted on city politics but he uses the 4 mayors as kind of the skeleton of the story, so I forgive him. He works in different story lines of homosexual rights/AIDS, art, music (focusing on Hip-Hop mostly as a born in the Bronx world-wide phenomenon), business, city planning, the litany of police brutality cases and policing issues, and a sprinkling of sports. IDK, but he may have literally gone over sequential newspaper headlines for ideas on material to include.

It works because Dyja can write. His descriptions are evocative, apposite, and often hilarious. Nobody, certainly not I, will agree with him in all of his tastes on these topics. Don't look for deep consideration of any given issue but more of a broad look at many issues as the city developed. Central to the book is the question of how the city that Gerald Ford told to "drop dead" and Jimmy Carter used as the pathetic backdrop to illustrate "Urban Blight" (remember that term?) re-established itself as the capital of the world (that's what our local Spanish language radio station calls it "El capital del mundo")?

I always emphasize to the younger generations that ABSOLUTELY nobody in 1978 was saying "Sure Times Sqaure is a squalid pisshole and Central Park isn't even safe to walk in but, you just wait, it will be Disney World in 20 years." Its really an incredible story and Dyja tells it well.

[Olivia Law]

I can’t believe how much I loved this book! It gave a really thorough history of a lot of NYC from 70s-ish to now. Pacing was awesome, and there was a lot that I really am excited to go read more about now.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be pretty unreadable. Every sentence is packed with references to specific people and places and things with almost no context about them, rendering the references meaningless. And transitions from one paragraph to the next feel more like non-sequiturs than a coherent narrative. Clearly, the author came across a ton of source material in the course of his research and put more effort into cramming it all in than anything else. I love a good NYC history story, so I was really disappointed!

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up on Long Island. My dad worked in the city; my mother's family owned a store in Brooklyn. I read the city papers alongside Newsday. New York City was an integral part of our lives. This book spans, effectively, my life; I was born in July 1977, a few months before Koch's election.

People sometimes romanticize New York of the 1970s and 1980s, and they shouldn't. It was exciting, yes. But it was dirty, dangerous, broke and broken, especially in the 1970s--as Dyja himself acknowledges. Koch was elected to a city that had no money, where the subways were covered in graffiti, where the Bronx had burned as landlords set fire to buildings and the city removed FDNY stations from the neighborhood.

His thesis is that the 1977 election marked the turning point in New York's evolution to the contemporary Luxury City, and that thesis has a great deal of merit. The New York of the 1980s was a thin layer of glitz over a city that was still struggling. My family loved Ed Koch. He was one of us, a Jew born in the Bronx with an accent as strong as our own. In the 1980s we didn't think about the cost of his appeal to White Ethnics like us: the damage to race relations in a multicultural city. We didn't think about how Koch actively encouraged the deindustrialization of the city, a process begun by the Port Authority's decision to containerize the New Jersey ports while abandoning the city's piers and the continual failure to invest in rail capacity.

I watched as Giuliani, then Bloomberg, cleaned the city, made it safe, turned it into paradise for the rich. But as Dyja points out, not all of it was bad or unnecessary. The parks are usable now. The abuse of Compstat is real, but the lack of data analysis that preceded it was worse. Crime is down, though in part because the crack epidemic burned itself out. The Post has less material to use for its lurid headlines: "HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR." Dyja successfully captures the contradictions of the past 40 years. He also generally traces the longstanding roots of the contemporary housing crisis, though some areas could have used fleshing out (he refers to the loss of units under rent control without explaining how or why that happened, or the loss of tax abatements and Mitchell-Lama units.)

Dyja is a strongly opinionated writer, and for the most part, I agree with his opinions. However there are some times where he draws conclusions without sufficient evidence, such as saying that Koch's standoff with an illegal transit strike marked "the end of New York as a union town." There are also some places where it threatens to spiral into a rant. The biggest issue is that he crams all of Bloomberg's tenure into a relatively short space and de Blasio is relegated to an epilogue. They don't get the treatment they really need or deserve.

[Ally Perrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

We love, and fear New York. And we dream of it loving us back because it demands the best of us. It demands that we take our shot, and while realizing our dreams is not, at heart, a matter of equality, it can be done with the grace of someone like Senator Robert Wagner, a Yorkville boot-strapper who'd said of his success: "that was luck, luck, luck. Think of the others," Over these three evolutions, though, inequality in New York went from an unfortunate byproduct of complex human society to something actively cultivated and promoted by a new culture of wealth and celebrity, valued explicitly because it was so visible. Inequality became the point.

[Christopher Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A whirlwind. A read that will inspire 10+ reads. For how expansive a history it provides, this is an incredibly focused commentary. Really enjoyed it.

[Belle · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this was very interesting, I found the formatting of this book a little confusing. Deyja clearly did his research and talks primarily about the succession of economic power of New York in the 70s and 80s, beginning with the libertarian Koch brothers. He then dabbles in the detailed failures of mayors of times past and present, like Fiorello la Guardian. Further, he investigates social issues like racial injustice played out with the New York Housing authority, Transportation Authority, Sanitation Department, and Parks services - and how these sects of state government responded to crises such as homelessness, poverty, and - most relevant of all in the 80s - AIDS and the social stigma surrounding it.

It’s true there are a lot of facts here, and I think Deyja does an excellent job of showing how social movements, like feminism, gay rights, work unions, and justice for African Americans, played out in the heavily libertarian politics of 70s-90s New York. The format, though, of this book left me confused. It’s like Deyja researched all this information and stranded it into a semi-coherent narrative ; I think his research would have been stronger had he organized his chapters into more synthesized, if not condensed, themes.

Overall this is worth reading and I learned a lot about New York, including the history behind certain buildings/landmarks/parks that otherwise I would have not known.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really rollicking, entertaining, kaleidoscopic look at New York City from the 1970s to now. The author really covers a lot of ground and I think is pretty evenhanded in dealing with the conflicts and controversies that have shaped the city over the past several decades. It certainly rings true to me in its description of the years I personally remember. One slight detraction is that this is really a very engaging description rather than something with a strong argument, so in that respect it's not quite a history in the most useful sense. Nevertheless definitely worth reading and especially worth bouncing off your own memories and impressions if you're a New Yorker or spent any significant amount of time in New York.

[Erin Bilé · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a subjective history of NYC in which the author constantly name drops in missed attempt to I believe ‘set the scene’ every other page. I did learn some new things about the past four mayors and their policies- this book is clearly well researched but it misses the mark on what actually makes New York great. I’m shocked I made it through till the end - I love New York and this book doesn’t capture any of the passion, grit, or neighborhood essence of my city- as I read this I kept muttering to myself: he’s clearly not a Native New Yorker.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

As much as a study in the “urban renewal” of modern NYC, this book was also a thorough retelling of the modern history of the city. NYC’s march from the brink of insolvency in 1978 to the reimagined skyline brought to us by Billionaire’s Row is a fascinating story with a cast of characters only New York can provide. The author’s damning indictment of old Boomer yuppies lamenting a lost New York despite fueling its current iteration is something to behold. I will say there seems to be particular glee is bashing millennial hipsters “discovering” Brooklyn when in fact it was “discovered” in 1990. Again, the word discover doing a lot of the heavy lifting for economically stable white children of the suburbs. The story of gentrification while nothing new is a sad tale and a warning to urban middle class residents as the demise of the co-op led to city living exclusively for and by the wealthy. The vignettes about the HIV/AIDS epidemic are especially poignant when read within the context of the current pandemic. Especially insightful is the commentary surrounding the epidemic alongside 9/11–the author arguing that beyond the trauma of the terrorist attack New Yorkers were also able to finally mourn those lost to HIV/AIDS when so much death was callously ignored. One cannot help but wonder if another outside trauma down the road forces New York—America—to more conventionally mourn the loss of this pandemic.

[Zeb Kantrowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book follows the history of NYC beginning in 1978 at a time when New York was at the bottom (or top) of a cycle of violence deterioration of the City's culture. This was the time when NYC was famous for the number of murders occurring and the 'tagging' of the Subway to the point where you couldn't see out of the window and criminality on the trains reached a peak.

What follows is a very detailed description as to the quotidian history of the City and how different parts of the City became 'no go' areas for even the Cops. As the State of New York took over the finances of the City and began to put it on a more solid basis, the Police began to invoke a type of policing (community) whereas the Cops concentrating on improving the "quality of life". As people saw that the streets were beginning to be safer, commercial and tourist businesses were expanding.

One of the major changes to the Police was the consolidation of all forces within the City (Housing and Subway) which made it easier to coordinate drug busts in the NYC Housing and the Subways. With the eradication of the inter-group problems the Police Force was able to create task forces that could cover interlocking criminal enterprises.

The rest of the book explains how neighborhoods were upgraded by the tearing down of derelict housing and the building of smaller city housing with lower density which made it easier to police and after many were privatized, the city had new neighborhoods where the middle class could afford to live.

It's very well written and easy to follow with a very linear style of writing.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This very ambitious book covers the history of New York City from late 1970's to 2020's, covering the administrations of Mayors Beame, Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomburg, and DiBlasio. He posits that the City in that time has gone through 3 periods and is now entering a fourth. He points out the good and the bad of each administration, with some being better than others (or worse, depending on whether you are a glass half full or empty sort of person). In a nutshell, the City was a mess when Koch took over, heavily in debt and under financial oversight set up by Albany. Improvements were begun under Koch, some of which did not start showing fruit until much later. Crime was reduced but at what cost? Wall Street types were heavily involved but at what cost? Owning homes was encouraged but at what cost? Real estate developers went crazy but at what cost?

The author does a decent job of highlighting issues and the consequences of certain decisions. He makes no secret of his own opinions but isn't too in your face about his personal thoughts. The book provides a good resource for conducting research. It does not tell the whole story and is a bit Manhattan-centric.

[Alec · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was assembling my reading list for 2025, I tried to apply some logic to when I'd read certain books. Sometimes that has meant exploring a subject through a few books read back to back, other times it's been about reading a series in short order. However, I feel like I nailed my planning with this book as I was walking early on the morning of September 11 while listening to the chapter recounting those events of 2001. Like most who lived through those days, I have my memories experienced safely from afar. The 30+ years of New York history I'd learned in the lead up to that chapter added so much to my memories of that day and the events which followed. For that alone, the whole book was worth reading.

Mr. Dyja gave me so much more than that over the course of the book. His attention to detail and wide ranging subject created a tapestry or panorama of this incredible city. I have virtually no connection to NYC, so I didn't read this out of nostalgia or connection. Curiosity was what fueled my interest and if that's all that you can muster about NYC or this book, it is certainly enough to justify reading this book.

[Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

my goodness that was a lot of information!!! for some reason I was expecting it to just focus on politics and planning, but there was a lot of talk about culture and business and other big New York things, which were interesting to learn about. the biggest downside was that the author assumes the reader knows waaay more about new york history than reasonable, so a lot of references required googling.

[Trevor Sess]

I thought I had another 20% of this book but it’s just a super fat appendix which makes perfect sense because I’ve never read a book so packed to the brim with factoids, anecdotes, stats, and straight up knowledge. I might give this another read in a few years when I have a little more under my belt in terms of general information about the city. Knowing pop culture figures specific to the city from 70-99 would help you out immensely.

[Joe Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome look at the changes in New York City since the 1970s when the city was in a steep decline. The author studies such momentous events as the AIDS crisis, the rise of capitalist symbols such as Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley, 9/11, and the rise of various pop culture movements.
The book starts with the ‘I Love New York’ campaign and jingle designed to bring tourists back to the city. He takes us through the financial renaissance right up to the new challenges presented by the pandemic lockdown of the city last year.
The author presents urban history in a very stylish and readable form. It belongs on the book shelf next to ‘The Power Broker.’

[Peter G · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book that deserves all of the praise it has received. Deftly weaving together the political, cultural, social, and the arts into an intricate of New York from the fiscal crisis of 1978 - Covid. A must read for anyone interested in NY history.

[Will Henshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the brief introductions dozens of subjects that I knew almost nothing about before reading this book e.g., urban planning, various art scenes. It was pacey and witty.

It is wild how much crime used to dominate life in NYC (and in many other cities by the sounds of things).

I don't trust any of it's causal explanations or the stories it told. Whenever the book covered topics I knew anything about, it was in opposition to my understanding. ~~Gell-Man Amnesia~~. The prescriptions were anodyne.

[Taylor Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down. Learned a lot and loved the dry sense of humor, but parts felt disorganized and sometimes preachy straight cis white man. Wanted to like more than I did.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A history of NYC from late 1970s to present day. For any NYC lovers (or livers) would highly recommend. Really balanced and an overview of the defining factors (and people) for each era.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is extraordinarily readable and smart and interesting. It’s about EVERYTHING and I have learned so much from it. The best kind of nonfiction!

[ash 💫 · Rating 4 out of 5]

really really interesting. i didn’t know much about nyc pre late 80s/early 90s so this was a really cool read. focuses a lot of government and big names but i didn’t find it too hard to follow. loved when he spoke of general cultural impacts, how even the things like music or pop culture or books could permeate the folds of the city.

[Jon Tillotson · Rating 2 out of 5]

…too all over the place on every page…

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lively examination of the recent political and social history of New York City from the 1970s to the present. Most of this happened after I left, so it was helpful with filling in a lot of blanks. Well-researched and snappily written, but probably not for those with little connection to the city. Actual rating: 3.5

[Mark Clennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re not from New York or lived here for a significant amount of time, you’re not going to like this book. If you have though, it is fascinating.