What Jonathan Mahler’s ‘Gods of New York’ captures — and misses
In “The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990,” New York Times writer Jonathan Mahler chronicles what he refers to as “four of the most convulsive and consequential years in the modern history of New York.” Actually, Mahler understates his case. New York in the late 80s was a city on steroids — and not the good kind — seemingly careening from crisis to crisis, headline to headline, demagogue to demagogue. The 1980s were a hot mess, and this book will blow the mind of anyone who did not live through it all. For pure reading pleasure, “The Gods of New York” merits a spot on the bookshelf of anyone who loves New York. But by virtually ignoring the economic and political forces propelling NYC (remember “it’s the economy, stupid?”), “The Gods of New York” fails to explain how New York recovered from the chaos to reassert itself as a world capital.
But before we get to the lessons — and misfires — of this compelling story, let us first consider a partial list of the sad, tragic and utterly insane occurrences that New Yorkers endured during that four-year period — please place your seatbelt low and tight across your lap.
One of the worst municipal corruption scandals in the city’s history culminated with the accused Queens borough president plunging a steak knife into his chest. In separate incidents, two African-American youths who one night found themselves in the “wrong” neighborhoods (namely Howard Beach and Bensonhurst) were chased down and killed by separate packs of white youths. A jogger was brutally raped in Central Park, while an affluent teenager from the Upper East Side was found murdered and partially unclothed on a patch of grass in the shadow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The AIDS and crack epidemics ravaged communities. Police brutality, largely though not exclusively directed against Black New Yorkers, was a regular occurrence on the evening news.
A severely mentally ill woman was briefly lionized by Phil Donahue and Harvard University for refusing to stop living on the city’s street, while a trio of putative civil rights leaders held New York State captive by promoting demonstrably false claims by an African-American teenager that she had been raped by a white state trooper.
A mob boss was gunned down outside Sparks Steak House on E. 46th St. and a Goldman Sachs partner had his career destroyed by an overzealous prosecutor whose agents led him out his office in handcuffs. These events were dutifully chronicled around-the-clock by no fewer than four viciously competitive daily newspapers, local TV news crews employing first-class journalists, a robust ethnic press and a mayor who was known to give two or three press conferences per day.
New York in the late 80s was a city on steroids — and not the good kind — seemingly careening from crisis to crisis, headline to headline, demagogue to demagogue.
Amid these intersecting narratives, readers will search in vain for heroes. At the center of it all was Mayor Ed Koch, who during his third term, found the city to be growing weary of his schtick. His polarizing racial rhetoric threatened to obscure the meaningful achievements of his twelve years in office. Donald Trump was a young, combative and charismatic developer whose ability to attract media attention dwarfed his modest NYC real estate achievements. Here we begin to witness the ugliness behind Trump’s rhetoric, his reckless business decisions, and his supernatural ability to survive adversity.
Rudolph Giuliani showed early promise as a prosecutor determined to break up the mob and go after municipal corruption and Wall Street malfeasance. But as prosecutors often do, Rudy overreached, ignored due process, leaked profusely to the media and eventually joined his future friend Donald Trump in resorting to racist rhetoric that inflamed the public. Finally, Reverend Al Sharpton was a larger-than-life character whose occasionally lucid analysis of racism and police brutality was obscured by his demagoguery and self-aggrandizement. Like the others, he could play the media like a flute.
In fact, just about the only truly sympathetic character to emerge from this circus was David Dinkins, a lifetime machine politician whose soothing rhetoric helped him defeat Koch and Giuliani in 1989 to become the city’s first African-American mayor — and, in my opinion, one of its most underrated — before being defeated by Giuliani in his 1993 reelection bid.
Beyond drama, what do we make of it all?
Mahler both gets New York and loves New York. In his “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning,” he zeroed in on the summer of 1977 and weaved the stories of the Yankees winning the World Series, the storied mayoral race (starring Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo, Percy Sutton, Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo and incumbent Abe Beame!), the blackout and looting that followed and the Son of Sam murders into a compact narrative that perfectly captured New York City’s zeitgeist, back when there was nary a glimmer of hope for the near-bankrupt, job-hemorrhaging, arson-ridden city.
That “Gods of New York” is being released on the eve of New York City’s mayoral election is fitting, as it should be required reading for each of the mayoral candidates, including frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, who was born two years after Ed Koch left office. Mamdani has instilled a sense of hope among many New Yorkers excited by his advocacy on behalf of residents who are being priced out of living in New York City. Among his ideas is an ambitious $6 billion proposal to offer New Yorkers free child care. To pay for this and other programs, Mamdani will face a critical choice faced by each of his predecessors, and here the real lessons of the 1980s become more relevant.
With little fanfare, the city embarked on a $5.1 billion, 10-year housing plan that led to the construction or renovation of a staggering 250,000 housing units. Entire neighborhoods, once abandoned, were rebuilt.
He can certainly try to find ways to raise taxes and fees on New York’s wealthiest citizens and corporations — actions that could easily backfire if they lead to an exodus of wealthy New Yorkers and corporations from the city. This has happened before, and often ends badly. Alternatively, he can put his mayoral muscle behind building New York’s economy, attracting corporations and strengthening its tax base. This will involve allying with large employers and attempting to engage them in the civic life of our town. Despite Koch’s resentment of “the richies” as he called them, this was the path his administration took, and I would argue it paid off huge for low and middle-income New Yorkers.
Most notable, of course, was his historic 10-year housing program that literally changed the face of low and middle-income neighborhoods. Having restored the city’s fiscal health through a painful period of post-fiscal crisis austerity, the Koch housing program gets only a single passing mention in “Gods of New York.” With little fanfare, the City embarked on a $5.1 billion, 10-year housing plan that led to the construction or renovation of a staggering 250,000 housing units. Entire neighborhoods, once abandoned, were rebuilt. Crime in those once-desolate neighborhoods began to fall. Wayne Barrett, the legendary Village Voice writer and frequent Koch critic, likened the Koch housing program to building the pyramids.
The rebuilding of Times Square, another monumental city and state urban reclamation project that helped fuel New York City’s economic recovery, does not get mentioned even once, and neither do the Koch administration’s strenuous efforts to retain corporations that fled, or threatened to flee, the city.
Those oversights stayed with me, as does an overstatement. The book’s title suggests the “modern city” we currently live in was born out of the havoc of the 1980s. Yes, the many crises Mahler describes were real and painful and left scars. But away from the headlines, and largely ignored in this otherwise fine book, New York was also quietly making extraordinary strides in addressing its housing abandonment crisis, stabilizing neighborhoods and rebuilding its corporate tax base. It would take years before the public could see the benefits of these efforts, and it is a less sexy story. But if one wants to understand what makes New York tick today, one cannot ignore the monumental policy and planning decisions that would alter our streetscapes and skyline for decades to come.
“Gods of the City” needs no postscripts, for we all know how the story ends. Ed Koch is long gone. Having broken onto the scene in the early 1980s, Trump has devolved from a relatively harmless tabloid darling into a malignant force of global dimensions. Reverend Al has mellowed, while Rudy is now a pathetic figure peddling conspiracy theories while fending off his legal troubles. The mafia is also a diminished force in the city, and while income disparities are arguably worse than ever, racial division appears less pronounced today than it was then. In his closing chapter, Mahler writes that “The great working class city was gone, and so was any realistic expectation that it might ever be bound by a single civic culture.” I am not sure that’s the right takeaway; New York City has always been a city of a tribes struggling to coexist amid a rapidly changing world.
“The Gods of New York” is a fascinating read about a raucous period of New York’s history. The real lessons behind the economic forces that make New York City tick have yet to be written.