Discover the powerful history of New York’s transformation from a city of middle-class aspiration to one of entrenched inequality.

New York City in the 1970s was in fiscal crisis, characterized by burning Bronx tenements, subway graffiti, and crushing debt. In the years that followed, the city reemerged to reach new heights, whether in stock averages or the gleaming pencil towers punctuating Midtown. But at ground level, basic institutions were cracking—and being rebuilt on a foundation of inequality. Historian Mason B. Williams traces the evolution of contemporary New York over the last half-century, focusing on three key dimensions of city life: housing, schooling, and policing. Following a rich cast of characters that ranges from mayors and governors to behind-the-scenes reformers and everyday New Yorkers, Williams finds that widespread civic engagement remains the bedrock of the city’s progressive traditions.

Mason B. Williams worked on City of Fortune: Inequality and the Making of Contemporary New York during his 2020-2021 term as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He will discuss his book with Pulitzer Prize–winner Heather Ann Thompson.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Mason B. Williams is the author of City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York, an Editors’ Choice of the New York Times Book Review. He teaches at Williams College.

Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan and the author, most recently, of Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage. Her 2016 book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy won the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. She writes regularly on the history of policing, mass incarceration, and the criminal justice system for myriad scholarly and popular publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service at least two weeks in advance of the event: please submit your request via this form. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. 

Livestream | Captions and a transcript will be provided. Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation at least two weeks in advance of the event: please submit your request via this form.

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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.