Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

by Bench Ansfield Narrated by Sarah Naughton

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Bench Ansfield breaks down a common misconception around a chaotic time in American history through a detailed examination of housing insecurity across the globe.

The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s-and its legacy today.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” This phrase was allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium. Throughout the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.

Historian Bench Ansfield explains in Born in Flames that the vast majority of the fires were not set by residents, but by landlords looking for insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives, landlords hired “torches,” mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords.

Based on a decade of research, Ansfield's book introduces the term “brownlining” for the harmful insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. As the FIRE industries eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began reshaping Black and Brown neighborhoods as easy sources of profit. Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements that sprung up, as well as the explosion of pop culture around the fires that show how insurance and race dynamics are at play today, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"A young historian’s superlative debut…this excellent book delivers the truth about ‘the burning years."

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[R]iveting… an outstanding exposé of the predatory capitalist machinations behind the ‘Bronx is burning’ saga."

Vivian Vázquez Irizarry

"Bench Ansfield exposes how the insurance industry, along with the federal government, collaborated and knowingly pushed my Bronx community further into poverty, despair, housing insecurity, and even death. . . . Having lived through the fires, I commend Ansfield’s dedication to excavating the truth behind systemic racism. I am profoundly grateful to them for redeeming the generations that suffered through the firestorm."

Robin D. G. Kelley

"Reading like a detective novel, Born in Flames is a devastating account of how the global insurance industry, property owners, and the federal government were the real arsonists, turning the ‘creative destruction’ of black and brown neighborhoods into profit and spectacle. By seeing the world through the Bronx, Bench Ansfield upends conventional narratives of the 1970s, capitalism’s global crisis, protest politics, even the origins of hip-hop. Destined to become a classic."

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

"This outstanding book will change everything that we think we know about what happened to American cities in the late twentieth century. A masterpiece of history."

Elizabeth Hinton

"Born in Flames is a searing and incisive exploration of the intersection of race, capitalism, and urban devastation in the late 20th century. Bench Ansfield masterfully unearths the hidden histories of landlord arson and the financialization of urban space, illuminating how racial capitalism set fire to American cities. Challenging conventional narratives of urban decline, Ansfield offers a profound analysis of the way policies meant to rectify inequalities instead deepened them, and how marginalized communities fought back against the destruction. A vital contribution to understanding how the fires of the past continue to shape the injustices of the present."

Tara Raghuveer

"Born in Flames tells a gripping story of how our cities came to be—by way of power, capital, and fire. . . . This book does what so many neglect, introducing the reader to not just the policies and power brokers, but also to the regular people of the Bronx, who revolted against the profiteers who conspired to burn their homes."

Kim Phillips-Fein

"Bench Ansfield has written an extraordinary history of the American city in the late twentieth century. Beautifully written and drawing on meticulous archival work, Born in Flames illuminates the economic and social logic that has led to the emergencies of our time."

Jonathan Levy

"Racial inequality persists because it was insured. In this beautifully written work, Bench Ansfield is the first to uncover crucial links between the 1970s wave of urban arson and the subsequent rise of finance in the United States. One of the very few essential books on the recent history of racial capitalism in the United States, and a revelatory and unusually creative history of race and risk."

Johanna Fernández

"Born in Flames shatters the myth that Bronx residents burned their own neighborhoods in the 1970s. Bench Ansfield reveals how a ‘60s-era privatized fire insurance reform policy— redlining in disguise—fueled mass-scale landlord abandonment and arson for profit during a decade of financial crisis, not just in the Bronx but nationwide. Amid the devastation, residents led one of the largest urban rebuilding efforts in U.S. history. Elegantly written and deeply researched, this groundbreaking history lays bare the roots of today’s housing crisis.”"

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-04-17
The Bronx was burning. Insurers and landlords supplied the fuel.

This young historian’s superlative debut substantially upgrades our understanding of notorious crimes that unnerved American cities a half century ago. Fire insurance is not often associated with gripping narratives, but as Ansfield demonstrates, discriminatory gaps in coverage incited a deadly, protracted spectacle “from Boston to Seattle.” In the 1970s, “a wave of landlord arson” struck numerous urban neighborhoods, most conspicuously the Bronx. Fires and related issues claimed a staggering 20% of the borough’s housing stock, displacing thousands and killing as many as 300 New Yorkers a year. Terrified residents slept in their shoes, packed suitcases nearby. The destruction had deep roots, Ansfield explains. Insurance companies, increasingly focused on fast-growing suburbs, sped the pace of their “decades-long withdrawal from U.S. cities” after predominantly Black 1960s “rebellions” in Detroit, Newark, and Los Angeles. In response, federal and state governments instituted a public-private insurance plan dubbed FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements). In this period, FAIR policies were haphazardly granted, and many properties were insured for far more than their market value. Crooked landlords cashed in, hiring impoverished locals to burn buildings and teaming up to run “an arson-for-hire business out of a Bronx storefront.” One arson ring burned 250 buildings, collecting millions in payouts before they were caught. The problem was worsened by deregulation and accompanying shifts in the economic system, which spurred disinvestment in cities and reshaped the insurance industry, with companies making much of their money by investing customer premiums in stock, bond, and money markets. The 1970s Bronx fires were frequently blamed on tenants, a relatively small number of whom did commit arson, Ansfield writes. But this excellent book delivers the truth about “the burning years.”

A vital history of racial discrimination in the insurance market—and the fires that followed.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940195383008
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	08/19/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged