Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City

Though one of its subjects is baseball you don't have to know or like baseball to apprecaite this wonderful book. The author takes us on a trip of New York City starting around 1973 and climaxing in 1977- a summer where the city was ravaged by a blackout and looting, a serial killer named the son of sam, poltical fighting, newspapers vying for the best headlines and a confrontation between Reggie Jackson and his coach with the Yankees.Again if you don't know or like baseball it's easy to skip these chapters, and just concentrate on the other subjects.A very well written book.

My kind of book about my kind of town. It sets sport, music & electoral politics in a social context. Mahler's evocative description of debt-ridden, dangerous and dysfunctional 1977 New York City evokes Hogarthian images of hell on earth. It is hard to believe that the Big Apple has come so far in such a short time. Maybe too lengthy, too detailed prose is devoted to the Mayoral election; however, the tales of the Yankees triumph against the odds in baseball's World Series are gripping page-turners - even for a Brit like me who knows nothing about the sport. A great read.

An enjoyable book about New York, weaving baseball, the mayoral race, the city blackout and subsequent looting in some poorer parts of NY and the Son of Sam killings all in 1977, page turning social history at it's best.

A cannot put down book, interweaving the mayoral politics, the baseball (Yankees), and the riots of 1977, in a city one cannot help but admire. Superbly and colourfully written the book is a snapshot of an tumultuous year.

Great book about my favorite city, US sport and politics. Beautifully woven together.

highly recommend fast service and good quality

Fantastic

I was in my late pre-teens and early adolescence in the period described in this book. But I do remember hearing, as a 10-year old, about New York being on the verge of bankruptcy and asking Uncle Sam for a bailout. I remember, too, the 1976 World Series in which the Reds swept the Yankees. The Yankees had virtually no offensive power, to speak of. It seemed to me that only Thurman Munson (the catcher) was providing the bulk of Yankee offensive power. Alas! it was not enough and conseguently, I fell out of love with the Yankees. To this day, I am NOT a Yankees fan.The book also talks about Studio 54, the disco & gay scene, the Son of Sam murders, and the 1977 NYC mayoral race. Fascinating stuff. Koch I remember. But I didn't know that Mario Cuomo and Bella Abzug had also run for the mayoralty against Koch, who was a dark horse at the time. I also remember watching an ABC Special Report in July 1977 at the time of the Great Blackout in NYC. Totally blew my mind trying to comprehend how NYC could cope with that!Then there was the 1977 World Series. I was now a Dodgers fan and expected they would beat the Yankees. Didn't count on "Mr. October" coming to the fore. When Reggie Jackson hit those 3 home runs in that game (which I watched at home in the living room) off of 3 different pitchers (each time off the first pitch), I GROANED. I knew then that the Dodgers couldn't win the Series. Reggie Jackson that day had become like a demigod.I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book for any reader who wants to get a good understanding of what life was like in New York during the 1970s.

I had seen the ESPN series years ago by the same name. I had no idea it was based on this book. In fact, when I got the book, I was pretty sure it was written after the series. I was wrong. What an interesting approach to look at NYC in '77 from the perspective of the mayoral election, Son of Sam murders, the blackout, and the Yankees world series championship. The characters are real, and bigger than life (Cuomo, Koch, Martin, Jackson, Steinbrenner, Munson, Son of Sam, etc.). Really well researched & written, and hard to put down. I highly recommend it.

Great reading for anyone who saw "80 Blocks from Tiffany's" and wanted more.

A readable, well-researched account of NYC in 1977, a year that NYC would probably rather forget. 1977: the year George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and Reggie Jackson kept sportswriters working overtime covering their many public disputes. The year a catastrophic power outage led to deadly riots and looting, destroying whole NYC neighborhoods. The year Studio 54 became a disco legend; SoHo, a quirky little artist community, was “discovered” (and arguably destroyed) by gentrification; and gays sunned themselves on abandoned peers, oblivious to the coming apocalypse of AIDS. The year Times Square gained notoriety not for its Broadway shows, but for its burgeoning, almost wholly unregulated porn industry. The year an obscure Australian media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, bought the New York Post, marking the beginning of the Tabloid Era. The year rowdy Yankees fans regularly threw garbage on the field when they weren’t shouting obscenities at opposing teams or raining stale beer down on the heads of the patrons seated beneath them. The year a mysterious serial killer, dubbed Son of Sam, eluded a task force that at one point grew to include over 700 police officers. The year urban blight and housing projects created neighborhoods so bereft of hope, people torched their own unsellable houses for the insurance money. The year 3 living, breathing caricatures – Bella Abzug, Mario Cuomo and Abe Beame – battled for the right to run a city that was literally going up in smoke. The year NYC’s liberal legacy (rent-controlled apartments, generous municipal salaries and pensions, free higher education), already stretched and strained, finally broke. The year one of the greatest cities in the world skidded into fiscal chaos and officially declared bankruptcy.In other words, Mahler has plenty of material to cover! And so he does, in the form of 67 brief, breezy, detail-filled chapters, replete with authentic eyewitness accounts and seeped in ‘70s “vibe”. Indeed, the narrative is so engaging and readable, I ended up enjoying parts of this I expected merely to endure. (Accounts of political campaigns and labor strikes not being my usually my cup of tea.)Like many folks my age, I’ve spent much of my life trying to forget that I lived through this turbulent decade in America’s history. Yes, Mahler’s narrative serves as an unstinting, unapologetic reminder of everything that was awful about the 70s. But it also forced me to appreciate the remarkable adaptability and resiliency of American culture. Sure, we’ve faced challenges as a nation – poverty, racism, bigotry, violence, really bad music – but even in the depths of despair, our hope never completely fails, our empathy never entirely falters, our ingenuity endures, and we keeping finding ways to triumph over the forces of greed, intolerance, and general boorishness. A lesson I’m trying to take to heart as our country once against finds itself struggling to rise above our old, familiar demons.

I had heard a lot of good buzz about this book since it was published a few years ago. When I found out ESPN was making a mini-series out of it, I decided to take the plunge and buy it. I actually didn't end up watching the mini-series, but I loved the book. One of the things that initially kept me away was the much-hyped baseball angle. Like any red-blooded American baseball fan that doesn't hale from the Tri-State area, I am life-long Yankee hater, and those George Steinbrenner/Billy Martin teams of the late `70s gave me plenty to hate. The last thing on earth I wanted to read was some hagiographic account of the Bronx Bombers winning the 1977 World Series. I needn't have worried. The Evil Empire's tumultuous season is just one of several neatly interwoven story lines: New York's fiscal crisis, the city's nasty '77 mayoral election, Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the moribund New York Post. Several other subplots add spice: the blackout riots, Son of Sam, the burgeoning disco scene. New York was a busy place that summer. There's nothing too profound here, just a snapshot of our greatest city at one of the lowest points in its history. Well paced and enjoyable, the book got me through several long airplane trips.

Took me until 2023 to read this.Excellent chronicle of the Yankees season put into context of New York City in 1977.