The gods of New York Egotists, idealists, opportunists, and the birth of the modern city : 1986-1990

New York Times Magazine staff writer Mahler (The Challenge) provides an expansive yet fast-paced history of the final chaotic years of New York City's 1980s. Mahler characterizes the era as one of overlapping crises: Wall Street's 1987 Black Monday crash, the rise of crack and homelessness, the growing AIDS emergency, and the "widening racial divide and the anger and resentment beneath it," which reached a boiling point with several vicious murders and beatings of Black men by white mobs and the lightning-rod trial of subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz. Mahler also profiles a media-savvy cadre of high-profile eccentrics who were "perfectly suited for this moment," among them U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, ACT UP firebrand Larry Kramer, "activist and opportunist" Al Sharpton, and Donald Trump. (He keeps things fresh by highlighting lesser-known incidents as well, like Mayor Ed Koch's "public spat with a ten-year-old homeless boy.") Mahler evocatively portrays how the tension peaked in 1989; in particular, the rape of a jogger in Central Park and the arrest of five Black and Hispanic teens, known as the Central Park Five, for the crime serves as metaphor for the city's fracturing and marks the moment Trump transformed into "the city's white id" through his infamous pro--death penalty newspaper ads. It's an astute, propulsive history of the "entrenched" inequality and zany politics that came to dominate the city and the nation. (Aug.)

Troubling times in Gotham. As he did in the bestsellingLadies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, Mahler scrutinizes a tense moment in New York's recent past, showing how the divisions that "consumed" the city under Mayor Ed Koch shaped its future and foreshadowed broader discord in the U.S. Mahler's focus on exhaustively covered figures who held power, or were trying to get it, results in a solid if not revelatory book about four extraordinarily "convulsive and consequential years." Koch, popular as his third term began in 1986, was soon damaged by his perceived mismanagement on numerous fronts. Corruption scandals undermined his administration. Homelessness surged, due in part to federal funding cuts, reductions in mental health in-patient care, and local government failures. AIDS was killing thousands of New Yorkers. With City Hall slow to act on the latter, playwright and activist Larry Kramer tried to out the closeted mayor and lambasted federal health officials like Anthony Fauci. Conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. said people with HIV should be tattooed to prevent its spread. Meanwhile, crack decimated poor neighborhoods, as "an inherently biased law" imprisoned many Black users and spared white users of powder cocaine. Violent crime and racial conflict stoked by tabloids made Al Sharpton famous and fueled international interest in Spike Lee'sDo the Right Thing. Rudy Giuliani's profile rose as he prosecuted Wall Street crooks. And Donald Trump, after making some bad business deals, "was now refashioning himself into the city's white id," Mahler writes. When Trump made inflammatory statements after five Black and Latino teens were accused--falsely, it turned out--of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989, famed columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote that he had "destroyed himself" as "all demagogues ultimately do." A creditable look at a troubled metropolis and its publicity-hungry power brokers. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.