Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics

from jec27

A very detailed and interesting presentation of the facts, figures and people behind and/or involved in the days of New York City's financial crises in the late 60s and 70s. A Midwesterner and a teenager at the beginning of troubles for New York, I have vague recollections of stories in the news ...

from laurenhc

Growing up in the NYC area, I have long been aware of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, but never knew many details about it. Fear City gives a good education on the topic. It is well written, readable, and much less dry than you would expect of a 400-page book about fiscal policy. Phillips-Fein pa...

from Gatorhater

An in-depth look at the strain the public resources that arose at the end of WWII, which placed an unsustainable weigh on the New York City budget. The budget started to unravel at the beginning of the 70's, when the unemployment rate started rising, but the city budget kept increasing trifold. T...

from archidose

Not long before seeing “Fear City” on LT's Early Reviewers list, I had watched Adam Curtis's 2016 film “Hypernormalisation,” which starts with two local but globally significant moments in 1975, one in Damascus and one in New York City. The latter was in deep debt and on the brink of collapse, an...

from NathanHoover

New York's debt crisis of the mid to late 1970s is ably depicted by Kim Phillips-Fein. She thoroughly traces the origins of New Deal liberalism on the finances and social policies of New York City and the ramifications of New York's inability to pay for those programs. Phillips-Fein's research is...