Gotham on the Verge

Post-1960s New York City is often imagined as exceptional—too big, too singular, too creative to fit prevailing trajectories of American history. Gotham on the Verge challenges that mythology. In seventeen essays, leading and emerging historians show late-twentieth-century New York not as an outlier but as a crucible for the forces that reshaped the nation. Covering the 1970s through the early 2000s, this volume examines the rise and consequences of post-industrialization, neoliberalism, and financialization during a transformative era in the city’s history.

The essays explore deindustrialization, the rise of finance and real estate, the city’s response to the AIDS epidemic, police violence, labor organizing among new immigrants, and the birth of hip hop and experimental art. Writing from the street level up, the contributors center ordinary New Yorkers: residents who challenged stigmatizing media portrayals, Black women who organized against police brutality, and immigrant workers who built coalitions for fair wages. Neither a story of collapse nor comeback, this book traces a city on the verge—revealing how crisis, growth, diversity, and inequality converged to forge modern New York and America.

Contributors are Bench Ansfield, Minju Bae, Andy Battle, Salonee Bhaman, Amanda T. Boston, Jim Downs, Ansley T. Erickson, Michael Glass, Dylan Gottlieb, LaShawn Harris, Benjamin Holtzman, Nick Juravich, Lauren Lefty, Sarah Miller, Brian Purnell, Pedro A. Regalado, and Alex S. Vitale.