Before Times Square looked like Disneyland and Tompkins Square Park was a family-friendly urban oasis, New York was a crime-ridden city in crisis. Jonathan Mahler's The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990 is an era-defining portrait with the grip of a first-rate political drama.
The four years that Mahler spotlights correspond with the final term of beleaguered New York mayor Ed Koch, whose 12-year reign ended when the city's first Black mayor, David Dinkins, was sworn in on January 1, 1990. During the book's time frame, New York endured a heartbreaking number of racially charged, city-dividing tragedies, as well as the crack and AIDS epidemics and an accelerating homeless problem spurred by unfettered real estate development. As his mayoralty wore on, Koch's catchphrase, "How'm I doin'?," elicited fewer and fewer favorable responses.
Mahler (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning; The Challenge) takes a novelist's approach to this material, interweaving multiple storylines and fleshing out characters who are quixotic, self-aggrandizing, charismatic, and vindictive, frequently all at once. Throughout The Gods of New York, Koch spars with just about everyone, and some of his adversaries are still in the news. Among them are Rudy Giuliani, who, having served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1989 (he would later win the gig), and a spectacularly debt-ridden real estate developer who would one day set his sights on a job even bigger than mayor of New York. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer