New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation

Dangerous, filthy, falling apart, garbage piled on its streets, yet somehow fabulous – this was New York in 1978. Over the next 30+ years, though, it became a different place: kinder and meaner, richer and poorer, higher, but less like what it had always been. New York, New York, New York, Thomas Dyja’s sweeping account of this metamorphosis, shows it wasn’t the work of a single policy, mastermind, or economic theory, nor was it a morality tale of gentrification or crime. In his review for The New York Times Book Review, Kevin Baker writes that in Dyja’s view, New York was never dying, “and why it wasn’t — is Dyja’s story.”  Don’t miss this fascinating conversation between Kevin Baker and Thomas Dyja (both Upper West Siders) that explores the excesses and underbelly of New York, as well as a fascinating, often surprising, study of how this great city became what it is today — for better or worse.