City of Fortune: Mason B. Williams with Heather Ann Thompson

Discover the powerful history of New York's transformation from a city of middle-class aspiration to one of entrenched inequality.

New York City in the 1970s was in fiscal crisis, characterized by burning Bronx tenements, subway graffiti, and crushing debt. In the years that followed, the city reemerged to reach new heights, whether in stock averages or the gleaming pencil towers punctuating Midtown. But at ground level, basic institutions were cracking—and being rebuilt on a foundation of inequality. Historian Mason B. Williams traces the evolution of contemporary New York over the last half-century, focusing on three key dimensions of city life: housing, schooling, and policing. Following a rich cast of characters that ranges from mayors and governors to behind-the-scenes reformers and everyday New Yorkers, Williams finds that widespread civic engagement remains the bedrock of the city's progressive traditions.

Mason B. Williams worked on City of Fortune: Inequality and the Making of Contemporary New York during his 2020–2021 term as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He will discuss his book with Pulitzer Prize–winner Heather Ann Thompson.

Available in person and via livestream.