Behind the Book Special Event
A Conversation With Jonathan Mahler
The Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City
Thursday, July 26 - 7pm - 9pm

 

On July 26, Behind the Book hosted A Conversation with Jonathan Mahler, author of The Bronx is Burning. The first fifty people who purchased tickets received autographed books. Two tickets to a Yankees game were raffled that evening.

A kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in 1977, THE BRONX IS BURNING (Picador Trade Paperback) is the story of two epic battles: the fight between Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson and team manager Billy Martin, and the battle between Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch for the city's mayorship. Buried beneath these parallel conflicts--one for the soul of baseball, the other for the soul of a city--was the subtext of race. The brash and confident Jackson took every black myth and threw it back in white America's face. Cuomo and Koch ran bitterly negative campaigns that played upon urbanites' growing fears. Surrounding this braided narrative was a prowling murderer dubbed the "Son of Sam," the acquisition of the New York Post by the unknown Rupert Murdoch, the opening of Studio 54, the infamous blackout, the evolution of punk rock, and the dawning of modern SoHo.

Photo courtesy of Aleksander Szczepanski

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