City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York

by Mason B. Williams

Overview

“Fascinating. . . . Williams tells the story of La Guardia and Roosevelt with insight and elegance.”—Edward Glaeser, New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393240986
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/21/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	544
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Mason B. Williams is a historian specializing in urban politics with degrees from Columbia University and Princeton University. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. This is his first book.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part I Foundations

1 Beginnings 3

2 A Season in the Wilderness 48

3 The Deluge 90

Part II The Hew Deal

4 "Jobs Is the Cry" 135

5 The New Deal's "Lost Legacy" 175

6 From Fusion to Confusion 212

7 New Dealer for the Duration 250

Part III War and Postwar

8 The Local Politics of Foreign Policy 289

9 The Battle of New York 325

10 "I Hope Others Will Follow New York's Example" 362

Epilogue 395

Acknowledgments 407

Notes 411

Photo Credits 475

Index 477

Editorial Reviews

A thoroughgoing, sometimes plodding account of the first major federal bailout of New York, one met with happier tidings than the equivalent of that old headline reading, "Ford to City: Drop Dead." Fiorello LaGuardia might have seemed an unlikely ally of Franklin D. Roosevelt; though born in Greenwich Village, he was from Arizona, wore a black Stetson hat to remind himself of his birthplace and was a Republican, conservative by even the standards of the era. Yet, writes debut author Williams, he was also both fiercely pragmatic and an enemy of the old political machines that conspired to keep him, as mayor of New York City, from doing his job. As a believer in market forces, LaGuardia helped build "a physical infrastructure in which commerce could thrive and the interdependent processes of urban enterprise function efficiently." LaGuardia's eventual progressivism, coupled with Roosevelt's willingness to put the federal government--through myriad programs, including the famed Works Project Administration--into action to solve the city's problems, were of a piece in creating "a new conception of urban governance" that wedded private and public decisions and initiative, without need for those corruptible and corrupting political machines of yore. "Like LaGuardia," writes Williams, "Roosevelt understood governments as parts of a continuity of social organization, with responsibilities derived from the interdependence of modern society." It is not Williams' fault that remaking a major city into another kind of major city is a complex business, but he errs toward too much completeness instead of eliding some of the lesser moments--the argument over whether subway fares should be free, for instance, or subsidized by a commuter tax. Perhaps too detailed, but a useful contribution to an already rich literature.

Kirkus Reviews