Kim Moody

If there have been any gaps in my library of books about New York City, it would be those documenting the 1980s and 90s. I have plenty on the two decades previous to those as well as the first two decades of the 21st century, but the Koch-Dinkins-Giuliani years are the ones I need to learn more about. This book, which I glimpsed on the shelf at the Strand, seems geared to filling that gap in my education. Although not exclusively about the city under Koch, the book charting the city's neoliberal shift does spend a couple chapters covering his administration, which can be seen in hindsight as a stepping stone toward the "Bloomberg phenomenon," as Kim Moody calls it. Anybody familiar with pre-crisis NYC knows the city is now a much different place: in many ways for the better (safer, taller, more diverse) but also for the worse, especially for the lower and middle classes. Moody, who had taught politics and labor studies before writing the book, does an excellent job in portraying the haves and have-notes, for lack of a better term. Although I found his sections on the former more interesting than on the latter (more a comment on my interests than his writing), he does an excellent job in showing the links between the rich and the working class, the dependence the former has on the latter even as the rich seem to "own" the city. Parts of the book made me depressed at the one-sided nature of the neoliberal "regime change," though Moody does end on a positive note – a call for change that probably helped Bill de Blasio get elected but has seen little effect otherwise in the ten years since the book was released.… (més)