Introduction

In the summer of 1975, as New York City’s fiscal crisis deepened and police officers, sanitation workers, and other municipal employees faced layoffs, angry police unionists began circulating a pamphlet that warned tourists that they might not be safe on New York’s streets. “Welcome to Fear City,” the pamphlets proclaimed, as they detailed evidence of spreading crime, rampant arson, and accumulating trash. Taking its title from that infamous pamphlet, Kim Phillips-Fein’s searing book, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, goes on to recount in gripping fashion both the financial meltdown and the policy response that triggered that protest and many others. Taking us inside one of the most consequential events of the past half-century of our history, Phillips-Fein provides us with a 360-degree view. She allows us to see the crisis from the perspective of bankers as well as trade unionists, politicians as...