Born in Flames

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” Supposedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, the phrase encapsulated a chaotic era in US history. Through the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, levelling poor communities of colour. However, as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the majority of the fires weren’t set by residents—as is usually assumed—but by landlords seeking insurance payouts. In an expansive narrative stretching from the Bronx to Britain to Brazil, Ansfield tracks the flows of money that signalled the arrival of our financialised age. From the ashes arose the modern US tenant movement and the fight for housing justice amid a new era of housing insecurity.