{"title":"Mason B. Williams","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"city-of-ambition-fdr-laguardia-and-the-making-of-modern-new-york-paperback","title":"City of Ambition: Fdr, Laguardia, and the Making of Modern New York - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCity of Ambition\u003c\/em\u003e is a brilliant history of the New Deal and its role in the making of modern New York City. The story of a remarkable collaboration between Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia, this is a case study in creative political leadership in the midst of a devastating depression. Roosevelt and La Guardia were an odd couple: patrician president and immigrant mayor, fireside chat and tabloid cartoon, pragmatic Democrat and reform Republican. But together, as leaders of America's two largest governments in the depths of the Great Depression, they fashioned a route to recovery for the nation and the master plan for a great city. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRoosevelt and his \"Brain Trust\"--shrewd, energetic advisors such as Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins--sought to fight the Depression by channeling federal resources through America's cities and counties. La Guardia had replaced Tammany Hall cronies with policy experts, such as the imperious Robert Moses, who were committed to a strong public sector. The two leaders worked closely together. La Guardia had a direct line of communication with FDR and his staff, often visiting Washington carrying piles of blueprints. Roosevelt relied on the mayor as his link to the nation's cities and their needs. The combination was potent. La Guardia's Gotham became a laboratory for New Deal reform. Roosevelt's New Deal transformed city initiatives into major programs such as the Works Progress Administration, which changed the physical face of the United States. Together they built parks, bridges, and schools; put the unemployed to work; and strengthened the Progressive vision of government as serving the public purpose.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToday everyone knows the FDR Drive as a main route to La Guardia Airport. The intersection of steel and concrete speaks to a pair of dynamic leaders whose collaboration lifted a city and a nation. Here is their story.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51366001311967,"sku":"9780393348989","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/G6aNS5eD8f9780393348989.webp?v=1789077250"},{"product_id":"city-of-fortune-inequality-and-the-making-of-contemporary-new-york-hardcover","title":"City of Fortune: Inequality and the Making of Contemporary New York - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePostwar New York City famously expired in a 1970s tableau of burning Bronx tenements, subway graffiti, crushing debt, and the tabloid headline \"Ford to City: Drop Dead.\" From its ashes the city reemerged to reach new heights, whether in stock averages or the gleaming pencil towers punctuating Midtown. But at ground level the city's basic institutions were cracking. The city was rebuilt on a foundation of deep inequality.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis elegant history traces the making of contemporary New York over the half-century from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s to the Covid pandemic. The focus is on city life in three of its key dimensions: housing, schooling, and policing. With finance and real estate driving the city's growth, each of these areas became more exclusive, less democratic. Affordable housing grew scarce, with the homeless population surging and working New Yorkers paying rents well above the 30 percent standard of affordability. Underfunded public schools were crowded out by better-resourced charter schools and academies, magnet schools, and gifted-and-talented programs. Policing was the most volatile flashpoint over this fifty-year period. Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Broken Windows strategy of attacking crime by cracking down on minor offenses escalated into Michael Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy, which targeted young Blacks and Latinos and yielded relatively few arrests. The city's deepening inequality was heavily racialized, one of many connections between this New York story and those of cities across the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe rich cast of characters ranges from mayors, governors, and headline public figures like Al Sharpton, to behind-the-scenes reformers like the progressive educator Deborah Meier, to the everyday New Yorkers who organized to support rent guidelines or local control of the schools. It is in a widespread civic engagement that the city's progressive traditions continue to thrive.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368969404639,"sku":"9780393292855","price":38.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/tJFJAXO8W09780393292855.webp?v=1789135971"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/mason-b-williams.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}