Download or read book When the Bronx Burned written by John J. Finucane and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the South Bronx during the 1960s and 70s, unscrupulous landlords and their torch-men set in motion a murderous wave of arson-for-profit, driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and injuring, maiming, and killing thousands more-including firefighters. Yet New York's mayor consistently refuses to give the fire department the manpower it needs to investigate the arson, and thousands of suspicious fires go uninvestigated. Jackie Mulligan and his brother firefighters stand up to the heartless evil of the slumlords by demanding that the mayor take action. But when the mayor refuses, Mulligan and his men take a stand against the arsonists, putting their jobs-and their lives-on the line. For Mulligan, the fight has become personal. And there will be only one winner. " John Finucane has written a riveting and fast moving novel Not only does he nail the drama in a way only an experienced firefighter can, he literally puts the reader inside the fire scene Reading John Finucane's comprehensive description brought back memories of my admiration for firefighters everywhere." -Charles J. Hynes Kings County District Attorney Former Fire Commissioner of NYC Author of first novel, Triple Homicide "For twenty years John Finucane breathed the acrid smoke, hauled the heavy hoses, and climbed the telescoping ladders for New York City's heroic fire department. He now writes about it from the gut-with verve, power, and poignancy. This is a fireman's fireman, pulling no punches and telling the story of a firefighter in New York's grittiest neighborhoods during the turbulent 1960s and 70s." -Roger D. McGrath, Ph.D. Author, Gunfighters, Highwaymen & Vigilantes Featured Commentator on the History Channel

Download or read book Before the Fires written by Mark Naison and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Residents of the South Bronx during its promising postwar decades tell their stories in their own words. In the 1930s, word spread in Harlem that there were spacious apartments for rent in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Landlords, desperate to avoid foreclosure, began putting signs in windows and placing ads in New York’s black newspapers that said “We rent to select colored families”—by which they meant those with a securely employed wage earner and light complexions. Black families moved in by the score, beginning a period in which the Bronx served as a borough of hope and upward mobility. Chronicling a time when African Americans were suspended between the best and worst possibilities of New York City, Before the Fires tells the personal stories of men and women who lived in the South Bronx before the social and economic decline of the late 1960s. Located on a hill overlooking a large industrial district, Morrisania offered migrants from Harlem, the South, and the Caribbean an opportunity to raise children in a neighborhood with better schools, strong churches, more shopping, less crime, and clean air. It also boasted vibrant music venues, giving rise to such titans as Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, Valerie Simpson, the Chantels, and Jimmy Owens. Rich in detail, these interviews describe growing up and living in communities rarely mentioned in other histories. Before the Fires captures the optimism of the period—as well as the heartache of what was lost in the urban crisis and the burning of the Bronx. “Excellent . . . profound, moving.” —Robert W. Snyder, Rutgers University, Newark

Download or read book Ladies and Gentlemen the Bronx Is Burning written by Jonathan Mahler and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-03-21 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By early 1977, the metropolis was in the grip of hysteria caused by a murderer dubbed "Son of Sam." And on a sweltering night in July, a citywide power outage touched off an orgy of looting and arson that led to the largest mass arrest in New York's history. As the turbulent year wore on, the city became absorbed in two epic battles: the fight between Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson and team manager Billy Martin, and the battle between Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo for the city's mayoralty. Buried beneath these parallel conflicts, one for the soul of baseball, the other for the soul of the city, was the subtext of race. The brash and confident Jackson took every black myth and threw it back in white America's face. Meanwhile, Koch and Cuomo ran bitterly negative campaigns that played upon urbanites' fears of soaring crime and falling municipal budgets. These braided stories tell the history of a year that saw the opening of Studio 54, the evolution of punk rock, and the dawning of modern SoHo. As the pragmatist Koch defeated the visionary Cuomo and as Reggie Jackson finally rescued a team racked with dissension,1977 became a year of survival but also of hope. -- Publishers description.

Download or read book The Bronx Is Burning written by Al Efron and published by . This book was released on 2019-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Report from Engine Co 82 written by Dennis Smith and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2009-09-26 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From his bawdy and brave fellow firefighters to the hopeful, hateful, beautiful and beleaguered residents of the poverty-stricken district where he works, Dennis Smith tells the story of a brutalising yet rewarding profession.

Download or read book South Bronx Rising written by Jill Jonnes and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-five years after this landmark of urban history first captured the rise, fall, and rebirth of a once-thriving New York City borough—ravaged in the 1970s and ’80s by disinvestment and fires, then heroically revived and rebuilt in the 1990s by community activists—Jill Jonnes returns to chronicle the ongoing revival of the South Bronx. Though now globally renowned as the birthplace of hip-hop, the South Bronx remains America’s poorest urban congressional district. In this new edition, we meet the present generation of activists who are transforming their communities with the arts and greening, notably the restoration of the Bronx River. For better or worse, real estate investors have noticed, setting off new gentrification struggles.

Download or read book South Bronx Battles written by Carolyn McLaughlin and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community activist Carolyn McLaughlin takes us on a journey of the South Bronx through the eyes of its community members. Facing burned-out neighborhoods of the 1970s, the community fought back. McLaughlin illustrates the spirit of the community in creating a vibrant, diverse culture and its decades-long commitment to develop nonprofit housing and social-services, and to advocate for better education, health care, and a healthier environment. For the South Bronx to remain a safe haven for poor families, maintaining affordable housing is the central—but most challenging—task. South Bronx Battles is the comeback story of a community that was once in crisis but now serves as a beacon for other cities to rebuild, while keeping their neighborhoods affordable.

Download or read book The Bronx written by Evelyn Gonzalez and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-05 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bronx is a fascinating history of a singular borough, mapping its evolution from a loose cluster of commuter villages to a densely populated home for New York's African American and Hispanic populations. In recounting the varied and extreme transformations this community has undergone, Evelyn Gonzalez argues that racial discrimination, rampant crime, postwar liberalism, and big government were not the only reasons for the urban crisis that assailed the Bronx during the late 1960s. Rather, a combination of population shifts, public housing initiatives, economic recession, and urban overdevelopment caused its decline. Yet she also proves that ongoing urbanization and neighborhood fluctuations are the very factors that have allowed the Bronx to undergo one of the most successful and inspiring community revivals in American history. The process of building and rebuilding carries on, and the revitalization of neighborhoods and a resurgence of economic growth continue to offer hope for the future.

Download or read book In the South Bronx of America written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Residents of New York City's South Bronx neighborhood live amidst what is frequently described as the most severe and widespread poverty in any U.S. metropolitan area. In the South Bronx of America is a work which, through documentary photographs, counterpointed with statements by residents and by newspaper reports and statistical information, offers both an intimate view of life in this neighborhood and a context for understanding the last two decades of accelerated social decay. In the words of Penny Coleman, New York Times photographer, In the South Bronx of America, "is important because it is not cynical, because it is a sincere attempt to provide the awareness necessary for change."

Download or read book The Fires written by Joe Flood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-05-27 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York City, 1968. The RAND Corporation had presented an alluring proposal to a city on the brink of economic collapse: Using RAND's computer models, which had been successfully implemented in high-level military operations, the city could save millions of dollars by establishing more efficient public services. The RAND boys were the best and brightest, and bore all the sheen of modern American success. New York City, on the other hand, seemed old-fashioned, insular, and corrupt-and the new mayor was eager for outside help, especially something as innovative and infallible as "computer modeling." A deal was struck: RAND would begin its first major civilian effort with the FDNY. Over the next decade-a time New York City firefighters would refer to as "The War Years"-a series of fires swept through the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Brooklyn, gutting whole neighborhoods, killing more than two thousand people and displacing hundreds of thousands. Conventional wisdom would blame arson, but these fires were the result of something altogether different: the intentional withdrawal of fire protection from the city's poorest neighborhoods-all based on RAND's computer modeling systems. Despite the disastrous consequences, New York City in the 1970s set the template for how a modern city functions-both literally, as RAND sold its computer models to cities across the country, and systematically, as a new wave of technocratic decision-making took hold, which persists to this day. In The Fires, Joe Flood provides an X-ray of these inner workings, using the dramatic story of a pair of mayors, an ambitious fire commissioner, and an even more ambitious think tank to illuminate the patterns and formulas that are now inextricably woven into the very fabric of contemporary urban life. The Fires is a must read for anyone curious about how a modern city works.

Download or read book Urban Legends written by Peter L'Official and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths. For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.

Download or read book A Plague on Your Houses written by Deborah Wallace and published by Verso. This book was released on 2001-11-17 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Plague on Your Houses is a scorching indictment of the decision to close fire companies in New York in the 1970s and a frightening study of the way misguided and malevolent social policy can spark a chain reaction of enormous and unforeseen urban collapse.

Download or read book Nonstop Metropolis written by Rebecca Solnit and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-10-19 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nonstop Metropolis,Êthe culminating volume in a trilogy of atlases, conveys innumerable unbound experiences of New York City through twenty-six imaginative maps and informative essays. Bringing together the insights of dozens of expertsÑfrom linguists to music historians, ethnographers, urbanists, and environmental journalistsÑamplified by cartographers, artists, and photographers, it explores all five boroughs of New York City and parts of nearby New Jersey. We are invited to travel through ManhattanÕs playgrounds, from polyglot Queens to many-faceted Brooklyn, and from the resilient Bronx to the mystical kung fu hip-hop mecca of Staten Island. The contributors to this exquisitely designed and gorgeously illustrated volume celebrate New York CityÕs unique vitality, its incubation of the avant-garde, and its literary history, but they also critique its racial and economic inequality, environmental impact, and erasure of its past.ÊNonstop MetropolisÊallows us to excavate New YorkÕs buried layers, to scrutinize its political heft, and to discover the unexpected in one of the most iconic cities in the world. It is both a challenge and homage to how New Yorkers think of their city, and how the world sees this capital of capitalism, culture, immigration, and more. Contributors:ÊSheerly Avni,ÊGaiutra Bahadur,ÊMarshall Berman,ÊJoe Boyd,ÊWill Butler,ÊGarnette Cadogan,ÊThomas J. Campanella,ÊDaniel Aldana Cohen,ÊTeju Cole,ÊJoel Dinerstein,ÊPaul La Farge,ÊFrancisco Goldman,ÊMargo Jefferson,ÊLucy R. Lippard,ÊBarry Lopez,ÊValeria Luiselli,ÊSuketu Mehta,ÊEmily Raboteau, Molly Roy, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts,ÊLuc Sante,ÊHeather Smith,ÊJonathan Tarleton,ÊAstra Taylor,ÊAlexandra T. Vazquez,ÊChristina Zanfagna Interviews with:ÊValerie Capers, Peter Coyote, Grandmaster Caz,ÊGrand Wizzard Theodore,ÊMelle Mel, RZA

Download or read book Burn Down Rise Up written by Vincent Tirado and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2023 Pura Belpré Award-winning young adult novel! Mysterious disappearances. An urban legend rumored to be responsible. And one group of friends determined to save their city at any cost. Stranger Things meets Jordan Peele in this acclaimed novel from an incredible new voice. For over a year, the Bronx has been plagued by sudden disappearances that no one can explain. Sixteen-year-old Raquel does her best to ignore it. After all, the police only look for the white kids. But when her crush Charlize's cousin goes missing, Raquel starts to pay attention—especially when her own mom comes down with a mysterious illness that seems linked to the disappearances. Raquel and Charlize team up to investigate, but they soon discover that everything is tied to a terrifying urban legend called the Echo Game. The game is rumored to trap people in a sinister world underneath the city, and the rules are based on a particularly dark chapter in New York's past. And if the friends want to save their home and everyone they love, they will have to play the game and destroy the evil at its heart—or die trying.

Download or read book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire written by Will Hermes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title provides a group portrait of some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, including Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash and Bob Dylan.

Download or read book Maniac of New York written by Elliott Kalan and published by Aftershock Comics. This book was released on 2022-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bloody saga of Maniac Harry continues! After the tragedy of The Death Train, Detective Zelda Pettibone and mayoral aide Gina Greene have lost the trail of the Maniac -- and the support of the city. Copycats are springing up, tensions are high and traffic is a nightmare. So, what happens when your favorite unstoppable, mindless killer resurfaces in a Bronx high school? Can Zelda and Gina get there before Maniac Harry adds to his body count? Will the students tear their attention away from their phones long enough to notice there's a monster in the halls? Writer Elliott Kalan and artist Andrea Mutti return for the next chapter of the hit horror-satire that's somehow even scarier than the world we actually live in!

Download or read book Bronx Is Burning written by Al Efron and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of New York during the period in the 1960s & 70s when unscrupulous landlords and tenants were setting fire to their buildings to take advantage of rent control and insurance rules.