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The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
by Bench Ansfield
A revelatory account of the wave of arson-for-profit that hit American cities in the 1970s, and of the tenants who put out the fires and reclaimed their neighborhoods.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!" Supposedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, the phrase encapsulated an entire chaotic era in this nation's history. Across the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, leveling poor communities of color. However, as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the majority of those fires weren't set by residents―as is usually assumed―but by landlords seeking insurance payouts. Ansfield introduces the term "brownlining" for the subprime insurance practices imposed by the federal government and insurance industry after 1968, and shows why, with buildings worth more dead than alive, landlords turned to the torch. In an expansive narrative stretching from the Bronx to Britain to Brazil, Ansfield tracks the flows of money that signaled the arrival of our financialized age. From the ashes arose the modern tenant movement and the fight for housing justice amid a new era of housing insecurity.
"A young historian's superlative debut…this excellent book delivers the truth about 'the burning years." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[R]iveting… an outstanding exposé of the predatory capitalist machinations behind the 'Bronx is burning' saga." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Born in Flames shatters the myth that Bronx residents burned their own neighborhoods in the 1970s. Bench Ansfield reveals how a '60s-era privatized fire insurance reform policy― redlining in disguise―fueled mass-scale landlord abandonment and arson for profit during a decade of financial crisis, not just in the Bronx but nationwide. Amid the devastation, residents led one of the largest urban rebuilding efforts in U.S. history. Elegantly written and deeply researched, this groundbreaking history lays bare the roots of today's housing crisis." ―Johanna Fernández, author of The Young Lords: A Radical History
"Racial inequality persists because it was insured. In this beautifully written work, Bench Ansfield is the first to uncover crucial links between the 1970s wave of urban arson and the subsequent rise of finance in the United States. One of the very few essential books on the recent history of racial capitalism in the United States, and a revelatory and unusually creative history of race and risk." ―Jonathan Levy, author of Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States
This information about Born in Flames was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bench Ansfield is an assistant professor of history at Temple University. Ansfield holds a PhD in American studies from Yale University and won the Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American history from the Society of American Historians. They live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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