Born in Flames The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

Bench Ansfield, Sarah Naughton

eAudio - 2025

The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s―and its legacy today."Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!" This phrase was supposedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, and it became a defining expression of a turbulent time in American history. Throughout the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.Historian Bench Ansfield explains in Born in Flames that the vast majority of the fires were not set by residents, as many believed, but by landlords looking for insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives, landlords hired "torches,&q...uot; mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing... more