| Under its earlier title: We're Still
Here, Jill Jonnes's recounting of the rise, fall, and resurrection
of the Bronx was hailed as a vivid history of the borough from its origins
as colonial farmland to its status in the 1980's as one of the nation's
worst urban disasters. Now, in this expanded new edition, the monumental
rebuilding of the Bronx by grass-roots groups, already underway in 1984, is
fully described. The book tells the colorful story of the borough's development as a New York suburb and boomtown with the influx of hundreds of thousands of German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants, which became a major base of political power for Franklin D. Roosevelt and his powerful lieutenant, Boss Ed Flynn. After World War II, the Bronx underwent its second boom, beginning with immigrants from Puerto Rico and African Americans from Manhattan. On their heels came the camp followers of modern urban poverty: drug dealers, real estate pirates, arsonists. By the 1970's, the Bronx was burning. Block after block of formerly working-class and middle-class housing was now abandoned and destroyed. This borough, which in its heyday had produced such notable Americans as Clifford Odets, Paddy Cheyefsky, Lauren Bacall, Herman Wouk, Jules Feiffer, Jake LaMotta, Stanley Kubrick, E. L. Doctorow, Neil Simon, and Tony Curtis, now lay in ashes, visible mainly as a dreadful object lesson. Yet change was in sight. Even while the worst destruction was taking place, new forces were rising, allying such institutions as the church, insurance companies, and dedicated nonprofit organizations to rally the Bronx and turn the tide of urban thinking. The final chapter of this book describes the triumphant rebuilding of these devastated neighborhoods. |