Just this week, I began reading Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, an excellent new book by Kim Phillips-Fein, historian and friend of SMP. The book takes an in-depth look at New York in the mid-1970’s, when it was on the brink of bankruptcy, as well as the aftermath of the austerity plan that would eventually bring our fair city back to life.

I am so very pleased to announce the publication of The Lofts of SoHo: Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950-1980, by SMP friend Aaron Shkuda, a fascinating book about how residents transformed the industrial neighborhood that is now called SoHo into an artist district, creating the conditions under which it evolved into an upper-income, gentrified area.