As the first African American elected mayor of New York City, David Dinkins underwent intense scrutiny—first from the black community, then from white liberal supporters, the media, and the city's electorate. Wilbur C. Rich focuses on the critical role played by the New York City media in the perception of mayoral leadership. Using interviews and words of journalists, Rich examines media coverage as both the architect and challenger of Dinkins' image. The making and unmaking of David Dinkins not only exposes much about the agency of African American politicians, but also reveals the fragility of electoral coalitions.

How did a scrawny black kid -- the son of a barber and a domestic who grew up in Harlem and Trenton -- become the 106th mayor of New York City? It's a remarkable journey. David Norman Dinkins was born in 1927, joined the Marine Corps in the waning days of World War II, went to Howard University on the G.I. Bill, graduated cum laude with a degree in mathematics in 1950, and married Joyce Burrows, whose father, Daniel Burrows, had been a state assemblyman well-versed in the workings of New York's political machine. It was his father-in-law who suggested the young mathematician might make an even better politician once he also got his law degree. The political career of David Dinkins is set against the backdrop of the rising influence of a broader demographic in New York politics, including far greater segments of the city's "gorgeous mosaic." After a brief stint as a New York assemblyman, Dinkins was nominated as a deputy mayor by Abe Beame in 1973, but ultimately declined because he had not filed his income tax returns on time. Down but not out, he pursued his dedication to public service, first by serving as city clerk. In 1986, Dinkins was elected Manhattan borough president, and in 1989, he defeated Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani to become mayor of New York City, the largest American city to elect an African American mayor. As the newly-elected mayor of a city in which crime had risen precipitously in the years prior to his taking office, Dinkins vowed to attack the problems and not the victims. Despite facing a budget deficit, he hired thousands of police officers, more than any other mayoral administration in the twentieth century, and launched the "Safe Streets, Safe City" program, which fundamentally changed how police fought crime. For the first time in decades, crime rates began to fall -- a trend that continues to this day. Among his other major successes, Mayor Dinkins brokered a deal that kept the US Open Tennis Championships in New York -- bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to the city annually -- and launched the revitalization of Times Square after decades of decay, all the while deflecting criticism and some outright racism with a seemingly unflappable demeanor. Criticized by some for his handling of the Crown Heights riots in 1991, Dinkins describes in these pages a very different version of events. A Mayor's Life is a revealing look at a devoted public servant and a New Yorker in love with his city, who led that city during tumultuous times.

From Tammany Hall to the election of David Dinkins, To Be Mayor of New York offers insights into the effect of ethnic competition on the demise of urban political machines. Beginning with a colorful assessment of New York City's Tammany Hall as it existed in the late nineteenth century, McNickle traces the effect of the arrival of large numbers of Jewish and Italian immigrants -and later black and Puerto Rican migrants- on the Irish-dominated political machine. He focuses on the political passage of Jewish immigrants through the various small parties unique to New York -socialist, American Labor, and Liberal. Later he describes their attraction to various factions of the traditional Democratic and Republican parties. He spotlights the willingness of large numbers of Jewish voters to cast ballots for third-party candidates on the basis of their shared philosophical commitments and political priorities. McNickle then examines mayoral campaigns between 1945, the end of the LaGuardia era, and 1989, during which the Irish receded and Jews and later African-Americans emerged as the most important ethnic groups in local politics. To Be Mayor of New York offers the most complete study of the development of Jewish political participation in New York. Placing a rise of the New York City Reform Movement in historical perspective, the author explains the election of New York's first Jewish mayor, Abe Beame, and the first African-American mayor, David Dinkins, as part of the political evolution of both these groups.

Chris McNickle argues that New York City Mayor David Dinkins failed to wield the power of the mayor with the skill required to run the city. His Tammany clubhouse heritage and liberal political philosophy made him the wrong man for the time. His deliberate style of decision-making left the government he led lacking in direction. His courtly demeanor and formal personal style alienated him from the people he served while the multi-racial coalition he forged as New York’s first African-American mayor weakened over time. Dinkins did have a number of successes. He balanced four budgets and avoided a fiscal takeover by the unelected New York State Financial Control Board. Major crime dropped 14 percent and murders fell by more than 12 percent. Dinkins helped initiate important structural changes to the ungovernable school system he inherited. His administration reconfigured health care for the poor and improved access to medical treatment for impoverished New Yorkers. McNickle argues that David Dinkins has received less credit than he is due for his successes because they were overshadowed by his failure to fulfill his promise to guide the city to racial harmony. This stimulating review of a transitional period in New York City’s history offers perspective on what it takes to lead and govern.

Most experts consider economic development to be the dominant factor influencing urban politics. They point to the importance of the finance and real estate industries, the need to improve the tax base, and the push to create jobs. Bruce F. Berg maintains that there are three forces which are equally important in explaining New York City politics: economic development; the city’s relationships with the state and federal governments, which influence taxation, revenue and public policy responsibilities; and New York City’s racial and ethnic diversity, resulting in demands for more equitable representation and greater equity in the delivery of public goods and services. New York City Politics focuses on the impact of these three forces on the governance of New York City’s political system including the need to promote democratic accountability, service delivery equity, as well as the maintenance of civil harmony. This second edition updates the discussion with examples from the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations as well as current public policy issues including infrastructure, housing and homelessness, land use regulations, and education.

A New York Times Notable Book A lively, immersive history by an award-winning urbanist of New York City’s transformation, and the lessons it offers for the city’s future. Dangerous, filthy, and falling apart, garbage piled on its streets and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble; New York’s terrifying, if liberating, state of nature in 1978 also made it the capital of American culture. Over the next thirty-plus years, though, it became a different place—kinder and meaner, richer and poorer, more like America and less like what it had always been. New York, New York, New York, Thomas Dyja’s sweeping account of this metamorphosis, shows it wasn’t the work of a single policy, mastermind, or economic theory, nor was it a morality tale of gentrification or crime. Instead, three New Yorks evolved in turn. After brutal retrenchment came the dazzling Koch Renaissance and the Dinkins years that left the city’s liberal traditions battered but laid the foundation for the safe streets and dotcom excess of Giuliani’s Reformation in the ‘90s. Then the planes hit on 9/11. The shaky city handed itself over to Bloomberg who merged City Hall into his personal empire, launching its Reimagination. From Hip Hop crews to Wall Street bankers, D.V. to Jay-Z, Dyja weaves New Yorkers famous, infamous, and unknown—Yuppies, hipsters, tech nerds, and artists; community organizers and the immigrants who made this a truly global place—into a narrative of a city creating ways of life that would ultimately change cities everywhere. With great success, though, came grave mistakes. The urbanism that reclaimed public space became a means of control, the police who made streets safe became an occupying army, technology went from a means to the end. Now, as anxiety fills New Yorker’s hearts and empties its public spaces, it’s clear that what brought the city back—proximity, density, and human exchange—are what sent Covid-19 burning through its streets, and the price of order has come due. A fourth evolution is happening and we must understand that the greatest challenge ahead is the one New York failed in the first three: The cures must not be worse than the disease. Exhaustively researched, passionately told, New York, New York, New York is a colorful, inspiring guide to not just rebuilding but reimagining a great city.

A game-changing account of the deep roots of political polarization in America, including an audacious fourteen-point agenda for how to fix it. Why has American politics fallen into such a state of horrible dysfunction? Can it ever be fixed? These are the questions that motivate Michael Tomasky’s deeply original examination into the origins of our hopelessly polarized nation. “One of America’s finest political commentators” (Michael J. Sandel), Tomasky ranges across centuries and disciplines to show how America has almost always had two dominant parties that are existentially, and often violently, opposed. When he turns to our current era, he does so with striking insight that will challenge readers to reexamine what they thought they knew. Finally, not content merely to diagnose these problems, Tomasky offers a provocative agenda for how we can help fix our broken political system—from ranked-choice voting and at-large congressional elections to expanding high school civics education nationwide. Combining revelatory data with trenchant analysis, Tomasky tells us how the nation broke apart and points us toward a more hopeful political future.