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

by Thomas Dyja

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982149796
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/15/2022
Series:	Must-Read American History
Pages:	560
Sales rank:	485,330
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 2.50(d)

About the Author

Thomas Dyja is the author of the award-winning The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream, as well as three novels. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

July 31, 1962

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A in English, Columbia University

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

I Renaissance

Chapter 1 "I Love New York" Day 3

Chapter 2 Something It Hadn't Been 21

Chapter 3 New York Equalize You 43

Chapter 4 Every Night a Different Channel 55

Chapter 5 To Lake Ladoga, and Beyond 65

Chapter 6 The Age of the Individual 81

Chapter 7 Be a Card-Carrying Capitalist 97

Chapter 8 They Begin to Blossom 111

Chapter 9 The Devil and Ed Koch 133

Chapter 10 From Queens Come Kings! 147

Chapter 11 Building the Bonfire 159

II Reconsideration

Chapter 12 The Age of Atonement 171

Chapter 13 A Psychic Turning Point 181

Chapter 14 Dave, Do Something! 191

Chapter 15 Mayor School 207

Chapter 16 The End of the One-Tribe Nation 217

Chapter 17 You Were on Your Own 231

III Reformation

Chapter 18 More Like the Rest of America 247

Chapter 19 Larceny in Everyone's Heart 257

Chapter 20 Cyber City 269

Chapter 21 Whose World Is This? 279

Chapter 22 Heat Is Quality 293

Chapter 23 Stand Clear of the Closing Doors 303

September 11, 2001 319

IV Reimagination

Chapter 24 The Pile, the Pit, and the Bullpen 333

Chapter 25 Oz Wasn't Built in a Day 345

Chapter 26 "B'klyn Cheers, Trembles" 357

Chapter 27 Too Big to Fail 367

Chapter 28 Hard Landings 383

Epilogue 403

Acknowledgments 423

Notes 427

Index 499

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/14/2020

Modern Gotham has recovered its glitter, but lost its moral compass and its soul, according to this kaleidoscopic history. Novelist and urban historian Dyja (The Third Coast) surveys New York’s 35 years from near bankruptcy in the 1970s through budget cuts and fiscal stabilization under mayor Ed Koch, plummeting crime and rising racial tensions under Rudolph Giuliani, and renewed wealth and visionary swagger under Michael Bloomberg. In each municipal advance, Dyja locates a loss: intensified policing brought harassment of minority communities, big-box stores bankrupted neighborhood shops, Wall Street booms and burgeoning artists’ lofts sparked gentrification that drove out the working class, and Disneyfied redevelopment extinguished Times Square’s squalid glamour. Dyja’s omnivorous curiosity takes in city bureaucracies, investment bankers, neighborhood activists, literati lunching at Elaine’s, hip-hop impresarios, and downtown artists. Dyja shapes it all into a cogent narrative studded with pithy insights and vivid profiles. (“Damp and vampiric, Giuliani was miserable on the stump , inexperienced and off-putting with the tentative humanity of a priest in street clothes.”) Dyja’s exhaustive knowledge of the era, dazzling prose, and all-embracing sympathy—and scorn when it’s merited—make for a stimulating study of New York’s never-ending upheaval. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, Bankoff Collaborative. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] tour de force, a work of astonishing breadth and depth that encompasses seminal changes in New York’s government and economy, along with deep dives into hip-hop, the AIDS crisis, the visual arts, housing, architecture and finance..... [Dyja has] in this outstanding work, done all that a historian can do to light the way forward, by so vividly illuminating the past."—New York Times

“An exhaustively researched, eye-opening look at the great city’s tumultuous, transformative recent history and what comes next.”—People Magazine

“This engaging book has the potential to become a classic text.”—Library Journal

'[A] cogent narrative studded with pithy insights and vivid profiles... Dyja’s exhaustive knowledge of the era, dazzling prose, and all-embracing sympathy—and scorn when it’s merited—make for a stimulating study of New York’s never-ending upheaval." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] mammoth undertaking – a whirlwind history of the city from the late 1970s to the present... fast-moving, punchy prose...He’s a master of using perfectly chosen adjectives to sketch a character.” —New Statesman

“a psychedelic express subway ride, from pre-1970s fiscal crisis to post-pandemic” —Sam Roberts, New York Times

"Superb reflections on a city resurgent...Dyja goes far beyond politics and Wall Street: he is equally interested in and intelligent about everything from Aids to hip-hop, Keith Haring and Anna Wintour, Spike Lee, Jay-Z and Elaine Kaufman...This is an especially important book for the majority of New Yorkers too young to remember the remarkable trajectory the city has experienced." —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian

"Morally and politically charged, an urgent, readable story of Gotham’s fortunes." —Kirkus Reviews

[Dyja] boldly anatomizes New York in a phenomenally intricate and revelatory web of provocative juxtapositions...A dynamic, passionately knowledgeable, surprising, and gutsy chronicle of a world-shaping city and humanity itself in all its paradoxical wonder. —Booklist (starred review)

"[A] book as marvelous and maddening as the city itself...Dyja's energetic storytelling, eclectic interests, and supple prose make New York, New York, New York a tour de force, and his intellectual integrity overcomes the passionate political convictions that help to make his chronicle so pungent." —Daniel Akst, Reason

“Dyja’s prose sparkles and sings, revealing endlessly fascinating details while never bogging down or losing an overall sense of forward momentum. This is brilliant work on a broad canvas.” —Passport Magazine

“Dyja’s stellar achievement with this indispensable book has been to write of the last four decades of New York in the very way that the city likes to think of itself—as propulsive, alluring, energetic, infuriating, scrappy, lyrical, nostalgic, omniscient, staggering, memorable, magical. The result is a history like no other for a city like no other.” —SIMON WINCHESTER, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and The Men Who United the States

“This moment was made for New York, New York, New York. With writing like the city itself—undaunted, unswerving, vibrant, and urgent—Thomas Dyja has given each of us the key to the city. We should grab it so we can unlock how to renew and revitalize this cherished metropolis.” —RICHIE JACKSON, author of Gay Like Me: A Father Writes to His Son

“Tom Dyja paints a wry, entertaining, and important portrait of New York City over the past half century. Offering vibrant detail and a vivid cast of characters, his is a pointillist portrait that makes a clear point: change is the dominant melody of this city—a city that will not be strangled by bankruptcy, or a coronavirus, or the motley collection of boobs who govern and loudmouths who grab attention. New York will always transcend its afflictions because, in Whitman’s phrase, it contains ‘multitudes.’” —KEN AULETTA, New Yorker writer and author of The Streets Were Paved with Gold

“Alongside E. B. White’s Here Is New York, Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, and Luc Sante’s Low Life on my short shelf of essential books about America’s greatest urban place now goes Thomas Dyja’s splendid New York, New York, New York. This opinionated, encyclopedic, and wise chronicle coincides exactly with my time in the city so far, yet I learned something new on every page—and finished with a deeper appreciation of the astounding, self-loving, evolving hive New Yorkers inhabit.” —KURT ANDERSEN, New York Times bestselling author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland

From the Publisher

★ 03/01/2021

Fiction (Meet John Trow) and nonfiction (The Third Coast) author Dyja offers a detailed chronicle of events from the most recent four decades (1978–2020) of New York City history. Having graduated from Columbia University, and having since lived and worked in New York City for decades, Dyja is highly qualified to create this work on the city he considers to be the greatest in the world, with careful explanation of the city's history of urban renewal. The author is opinionated, but his research is staggeringly thorough, and his interpretation of major events, such as the September 11 attacks, and insight into prominent governmental figures, like Mayors Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Bloomberg; Governors Andrew Cuomo and George Pataki; and even Donald Trump, will resonate with and appeal to most who are even somewhat familiar with the city and its history, and will educate those who are not. VERDICT This engaging book has the potential to become a classic text, thanks to the detailed work and references that have gone into its creation. Recommended for libraries in larger institutions or for others with an interest in New York or urban studies.—Steve Dixon, State Univ. of New York, Delhi

Library Journal

2020-12-25
The fall and rise of today’s New York City—for better and worse.

It wasn’t long ago, writes novelist and historian Dyja, when NYC, or at least parts of it, was held up as “a ruin so apparently complete that the rest of the falling nation could say that at least they weren’t there.” That was when Jimmy Carter was president, after Gerald Ford had told the city to “drop dead,” when South Bronx alone experienced 63,000 arsons in two years and the rest of the city was grim and gritty. Thirty-odd years later, the city had undergone “the most dramatic peacetime transformation of a city since Haussmann rebuilt Paris.” The result is a theme park for the conspicuous consumer, a place very different from the “workers’ paradise” of public housing, schools, transit, and other public goods promised by Fiorello La Guardia not long after the five boroughs joined. The low that preceded the high was profound; in the 1970s, the city “lost control…not just because of debt, but because it couldn’t effectively manage its information,” requiring an overhaul of its budgeting and reporting processes. But getting to emerald-city status took more than making the city’s finances transparent. It also involved the rise of Rudy Giuliani, who, long before he became Donald Trump’s latter-day Roy Cohn, divined that “the Irish, Italians, Catholics, and Jews were…all part of White Western Civilization, which needed no explanation or defense,” and used this insight as cause to crack down on non-White populations. Under Michael Bloomberg, money became ascendant. The industrial New York of old became a technological and financial capital par excellence, “a ‘Luxury City’…more upset when a Chanel store has its windows broken than when police murder a man.” Dyja is no fan of the authoritarians and plutocrats, clearly, but he does not spare more liberal mayors like David Dinkins and Bill de Blasio, who “let the city go adrift.”

Morally and politically charged, an urgent, readable story of Gotham’s fortunes.

Kirkus Reviews