[D]isputes the long-held notion that tenants were responsible for many of the notorious fires that burned in New York City in the '70s and '80s, many of them in The Bronx. Instead, Ansfield places the blame on flawed and inadequate legislation and greedy landlords...More worrying, argues Ansfield, is that the inequality that fueled the fires in the 1970s hasn't gone away.--Gavin Newsham "New York Post"

[A]n eye-opening, myth-busting analysis of this little-known--and still relevant--episode in American urban history.--Glenn C. Altschuler "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"

This outstanding book will change everything that we think we know about what happened to American cities in the late twentieth century. A masterpiece of history.--Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

Reading like a detective novel, Born in Flames is a devastating account of how the global insurance industry, property owners, and the federal government were the real arsonists, turning the 'creative destruction' of black and brown neighborhoods into profit and spectacle. By seeing the world through the Bronx, Bench Ansfield upends conventional narratives of the 1970s, capitalism's global crisis, protest politics, even the origins of hip-hop. Destined to become a classic.--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class

Racial inequality persists because it was insured. In this beautifully written work, Bench Ansfield is the first to uncover crucial links between the 1970s wave of urban arson and the subsequent rise of finance in the United States. One of the very few essential books on the recent history of racial capitalism in the United States, and a revelatory and unusually creative history of race and risk.--Jonathan Levy, author of Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States

Born in Flames is a searing and incisive exploration of the intersection of race, capitalism, and urban devastation in the late 20th century. Bench Ansfield masterfully unearths the hidden histories of landlord arson and the financialization of urban space, illuminating how racial capitalism set fire to American cities. Challenging conventional narratives of urban decline, Ansfield offers a profound analysis of the way policies meant to rectify inequalities instead deepened them, and how marginalized communities fought back against the destruction. A vital contribution to understanding how the fires of the past continue to shape the injustices of the present.--Elizabeth Hinton, author of America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960

Bench Ansfield has written an extraordinary history of the American city in the late twentieth century. Beautifully written and drawing on meticulous archival work, Born in Flames illuminates the economic and social logic that has led to the emergencies of our time.--Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics

This is the panoramic, it's-all-connected view that racial-capitalism theory promises.--Daniel Immerwahr "The New Yorker"

Like the best crime dramas, Born in Flames manages to be both diligent and engrossing.--Tracy Rosenthal "New Republic"

Prodigious research.... [Keeps] readers attuned to the ways that finance and policy impact people's lives and neighborhoods.--Samuel Zipp "The Nation"

For a book that is, at base, a story of the serpentine ways of the insurance industry, Born in Flames includes arresting images: children laid out unconscious on the sidewalk from smoke inhalation; a paranoid 'fire broker', convinced his office was bugged, conducting a meeting in the men's room. Ansfield has found a way to emphasize the moral in 'moral hazard.'--Dan Piepenbring "Harper's"

[O]utstanding.... A strength of Born in Flames is the care and finesse with which Ansfield treats the lives that the fires scorched--much as Robert Caro, in The Power Broker, tended to Bronx residents whose worlds were run through by reckless mid-century highway construction.... The book's feckless rings of white-collar crooks give it a touch of true-crime intrigue, and its confrontations between underdog tenants and the industry help explain our present residential calamity.--Michael Friedrich "The Baffler"

Born in Flames makes for a refreshing, historically grounded retort to a recent wave of anti-regulatory rhetoric.... Ansfield offers one of the clearest explanations of how racism is reproduced and naturalized by capitalism.--Charlotte E. Rosen "Protean Mag"

Born in Flames is a major scholarly contribution.... Beyond the clarity--and the beauty--of its prose, Ansfield draws on and synthesizes a remarkable range of archives, from community organizations and municipal and national repositories to oral histories, disco and hip-hop lyrics, and short-lived video games.--Richard Nisa "Journal of Urban Affairs"

A young historian's superlative debut...this excellent book delivers the truth about 'the burning years.--Kirkus Reviews, starred

[R]iveting.... an outstanding exposé of the predatory capitalist machinations behind the 'Bronx is burning' saga.--Publishers Weekly, starred review

Bench Ansfield exposes how the insurance industry, along with the federal government, collaborated and knowingly pushed my Bronx community further into poverty, despair, housing insecurity, and even death.... Having lived through the fires, I commend Ansfield's dedication to excavating the truth behind systemic racism. I am profoundly grateful to them for redeeming the generations that suffered through the firestorm.--Vivian Vázquez Irizarry, director of Decade of Fire

Born in Flames tells a gripping story of how our cities came to be--by way of power, capital, and fire.... This book does what so many neglect, introducing the reader to not just the policies and power brokers, but also to the regular people of the Bronx, who revolted against the profiteers who conspired to burn their homes.--Tara Raghuveer, founding director, Tenant Union Federation and KC Tenants

Born in Flames shatters the myth that Bronx residents burned their own neighborhoods in the 1970s. Bench Ansfield reveals how a '60s-era privatized fire insurance reform policy--redlining in disguise--fueled mass-scale landlord abandonment and arson for profit during a decade of financial crisis, not just in the Bronx but nationwide. Amid the devastation, residents led one of the largest urban rebuilding efforts in U.S. history. Elegantly written and deeply researched, this groundbreaking history lays bare the roots of today's housing crisis.--Johanna Fernández, author of The Young Lords: A Radical History

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2026-09-01

Length: 368 pages