Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
Revelatory ... With forensic precision, Born in Flames dismantles this pernicious fiction—not just by identifying the real culprits, but by showing how arson was built into the political economy of the late-20th-century city. Ansfield demonstrates that these fires were the inevitable byproduct of a racialized financial logic that remade urban America ... The counternarrative Ansfield offers is as absorbing as it is enraging ... Ansfield structures these revelations with the pacing of a mystery, posing questions — Why did insurers keep paying out? Why did the very systems meant to prevent insurance fraud instead enable it? — that land with the force of plot twists ... Deeply researched and masterfully told, Born in Flames is a definitive account of how race, risk and exploitative real estate have shaped the American city.
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Formidable ... When Ansfield filed their dissertation on this topic, in 2021, the response was rapturous. Prizes were heaped at their feet: best dissertation in American studies, in American history, at Yale (co-won), and so on. Reading their book, which is even sharper, you can see why. It’s a deft, at times brilliant history ... Ansfield’s great achievement is following the money ... Ansfield discusses these phenomena with admirable sensitivity.
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An eye-opening, myth-busting analysis ... Ansfield makes a compelling argument that the essential ingredients stimulating the conflagrations were government-sponsored policies 'redlining' and cancellation of coverage by insurance companies that had left inner cities uninsured or underinsured for property damage.
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