A vital history of racial discrimination in the insurance market—and the fires that followed.
The Bronx was burning. Insurers and landlords supplied the fuel.
This young historian’s superlative debut substantially upgrades our understanding of notorious crimes that unnerved American cities a half century ago. Fire insurance is not often associated with gripping narratives, but as Ansfield demonstrates, discriminatory gaps in coverage incited a deadly, protracted spectacle “from Boston to Seattle.” In the 1970s, “a wave of landlord arson” struck numerous urban neighborhoods, most conspicuously the Bronx. Fires and related issues claimed a staggering 20% of the borough’s housing stock, displacing thousands and killing as many as 300 New Yorkers a year. Terrified residents slept in their shoes, packed suitcases nearby. The destruction had deep roots, Ansfield explains. Insurance companies, increasingly focused on fast-growing suburbs, sped the pace of their “decades-long withdrawal from U.S. cities” after predominantly Black 1960s “rebellions” in Detroit, Newark, and Los Angeles. In response, federal and state governments instituted a public-private insurance plan dubbed FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements). In this period, FAIR policies were haphazardly granted, and many properties were insured for far more than their market value. Crooked landlords cashed in, hiring impoverished locals to burn buildings and teaming up to run “an arson-for-hire business out of a Bronx storefront.” One arson ring burned 250 buildings, collecting millions in payouts before they were caught. The problem was worsened by deregulation and accompanying shifts in the economic system, which spurred disinvestment in cities and reshaped the insurance industry, with companies making much of their money by investing customer premiums in stock, bond, and money markets. The 1970s Bronx fires were frequently blamed on tenants, a relatively small number of whom did commit arson, Ansfield writes. But this excellent book delivers the truth about “the burning years.”
A vital history of racial discrimination in the insurance market—and the fires that followed.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781324093510
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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