Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, Phillips-Fein - B

                     "For President Ford and those around him, the New York fiscal crisis was a story of the bankruptcy - economic and moral alike - of liberal politics. It proved that using government to combat social ills would end in collapse. It provided a spectacular repudiation of the Great Society, the War on Poverty, even the New Deal. But for ordinary people, a fiscal crisis meant something different: it marked a change in what it meant to be a New Yorker and a citizen. We are still living with the consequences of this transformation, today." 

                      "Both the crisis and the government responses to it...seemed almost inevitable. To question that inevitability is the project of this book."

                       The closure of the dilapidated West Side Highway in the early 70's was symptomatic of the entire city, which too seemed to be coming apart at the seams. In the post-war years, NY boomed and represented all of the good that government could do. It was an industrial city where blue collar jobs outnumbered white ones. Somewhere between a fourth and a third of its workers were in unions. But between the late 60's and the crisis, half a million jobs disappeared as the manufacturers, shippers, and garment industries left town. All of a sudden, the number of people receiving public assistance multiplied by four. Whites were fleeing to the suburbs. Under Robert Wagner, the city began to borrow more and more, and for the first time to cover operating expenses. John Lindsay raised taxes, delayed infrastructure maintenance, and borrowed too. When Abe Beame became mayor in 1974, the city was reeling from a recession and the consequences of the Arab oil boycott. Borrowing continued, albeit at increasingly high rates, and the rating agencies began to downgrade NY's debt. Although it might have provided an orderly resolution of the issues, bankruptcy was abhorred by all and never really considered. The bankers looked at Beame "and saw a man who failed to understand they city's responsibility to its banks and shareholders. He looked at them and saw a group of men who had the money and power to help New York but who stubbornly refused to do so." In February, 1975 the city failed to sell $260M of tax anticipation notes. In May, Beame and Gov. Carey went to the White House to discuss the possibility of federal assistance. Beame asked for a ninety day loan, but no one in Washington believed he could provide a balanced budget anytime soon. Ford declined to help the city.

                     The city and state were on their own. The solution initiated by Albany was the creation of the Municipal Assistance Corporation, a state entity that would help consolidate the city's debt which it would pay with the city's sales tax revenue.    The city laid off thousands, including 5,034 police officers on June 30. The next day, the city was in chaos as garbage piled up, fire stations were closed, laid off workers protested and municipal services were curtailed. The state created the Emergency Financial Control Board to further reduce the mayor's control of the city's finances. Nonetheless, default remained in the air. In October, it was so close that the mayor signed a bankruptcy petition. Late in the year, the state approved a series of tax increases and the federal government passed a law authorizing short term federal loans to the city. As the year closed, it appeared as if the city was no longer on the cusp of default.

                    The consequences of the city's plight were severe. Almost 70,000 jobs were eliminated, child care centers closed, money for parks, libraries, health care, police and fire simply vanished. CUNY lost a quarter of its students. Capital improvements and repairs stopped. The city itself began to turn the corner. The Bicentennial festivities and the Democratic Convention both went off without a glitch. Apartments and hotels were built. Tourism hit record highs in 1979, the year the city reentered the credit markets. Nonetheless, services continued to be cut, and the quality of life in the city deteriorated as the city became dirtier, less safe and less healthy. It was less of a city, but one that could stand on its own two feet.

                       "Forty years after the fiscal crisis, New York appears in many ways radically different from its 1970's self." It is a much safer and more pleasant place. The interests of business and the wealthy are now paramount in NYC's politics. "Amid the prosperity that now dominates New York, there is also a desperate poverty and an acute sense that a different, older metropolis full of possibility has been lost." It's been fascinating to delve into details about a time of crisis that I remember vividly. Thanks Will for the recommendation.

              

                      

The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, A Poet, An Heiress, And A Spy in A World War II British Internment Camp, Parkin - B

                      The focus of this history is an internment camp set up on the Isle of Man at the war's outbreak. Britain interned enemy aliens whom they deemed to be security threats. Ironically, many of them had escaped Nazism, arriving in Britain as political refugees. Britain was motivated by the violence of Kristallnacht to welcome Jewish children to the UK. The 'Kindertransport' took place in 1939, but within a year, attitudes changed. After the fall of France, there was a movement to intern all Germans and Austrians as potential fifth columnists and spies. "The refugees transformation from asylum seekers to enemy suspects was complete. A spattering of arrests became a torrent."  Initially, conditions in the transit camps were no better than on the continent. Life on the Isle of Man was much better. At the Hutchinson Camp, the British leadership acknowledged sympathy for the plight of the interned. Hutchinson housed noted jurists, businessmen and an abundance of artists and musicians, as well as a Hohenzollern prince. The internees organized a command structure and began a lecture series featuring noted scholars. Within a month, there were forty lectures per week, soccer matches, chess tournaments and a technical school. Fully 80% of the internees were Jewish, a fact that garnered world wide attention and approbation. As the fear of invasion faded, some were allowed to leave. As the year went on, it became apparent that many, many internees should have not been there and more were released. The discipline relaxed as groups were allowed to go to a museum and one group actually helped on an archaeological dig. By March, 1942, half of the 25,000 interned the previous summer were released. The camp slowly emptied and was a POW camp at war's end. Many of the internees remained in Britain, anglicized their surnames, and made material contributions to post-war Britain. This stain on the UK's war memories is still shrouded in secrecy and long forgotten.

 

Everybody Knows, Harper - B

                      This LA novel opens up fast and furious with the hit and run death of a major player, a Hollywood publicist specializing in killing unwholesome stories. Dan was the ultimate insider, but apparently had been thinking about exposing a major player. His colleague, Mae, is devastated and tries to sort out what Dan was up to. The trail leads to crooked cops, a seriously compromised security firm,  a producer bedding teenagers, and an endless array of sleaze. The novel sputters at the end, but is nonetheless a scary look at Hollywood.

Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century, Homans - B+

                     Georgi Balanchivadze was born in St. Petersburg in January, 1904. His father, Meliton, was Georgian; his mother, Maria, Russian. When Georgi was 9, he was accepted in the Imperial Theater School and left home to live in the school's barracks. It was an excellent school where he learned French and how to play the piano, and most importantly, danced ballet daily. The children frequently appeared in ballets at the Mariinsky Theater, often before the Czar. By 1916, the hardships of the war impacted the school, and soon the streets were awash in the blood of the Revolution. Georgi once saw people cut up and eat a horse that had dropped dead on the street. As civic society collapsed, his parents and siblings moved to Georgia. George and a young dancer, Tamara Geva, were married in 1922. Both young dancers performed wherever and whenever they could. He and some friends founded the Young Ballet and his 'Funeral March' premiered at their first performance. A second ballet drew criticism from the Mariinsky board in the spring of 1924. George and his friends decided it might be a good time to see if their performances would appeal to European audiences. They left Petrograd. "The destruction and death that engulfed his city and his life came with, and even in part caused, an artistic vitality that was central to everything he went on to do. The revolution had ruined his childhood and provided, in no small measure, the source of his genius."

                    After a brief stop in Berlin, the troupe moved to Paris at Diaghilev's request. With Nijinsky and Fokine as choreographers and Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov as composers, Diaghilev established Ballets Russes as a world class ballet company. He hired George as a dancer and choreographer, and obtained a Nansen passport in the name of Balanchine for him. George worked closely with Stravinsky, who became a mentor and father figure to him. He created ballets, staged operas, and generally ran the company for Diaghilev. After Diaghilev died in 1929, George worked in Copenhagen, London and Paris creating ballets and trying to create or find a business model that could survive. Lincoln Kirstein, American dance patron and impresario, convinced him to move to America.

                     Kirstein  wanted to create a permanent ballet company in America and was convinced that George was the person to help accomplish his goal. Balanchine landed in New York in October, 1933. Kirstein incorporated the School of American Ballet, found space to occupy, fed and housed Balanchine, and made superhuman efforts to insure the legality of George's visa to America. Later that year, the school opened in the Tuxedo Building at 59th and Madison. Many of the students were the children of Russian and European refugees. George, long divorced from Tamara and fearful of dying of tuberculosis, continued his life long pursuit of women, and bedded his dancers. His first ballet in America was 'Serenade.' A brief appointment to the Metropolitan Opera failed. He turned to Hollywood and Broadway. He was fabulously successful, and began making money by choreographing a dozen Broadway shows and five Hollywood films over the decade of  1936-45. He was a full fledged member of the artistic European avant garde taking America by storm. While in Hollywood, he married Vera Zorina in 1938, and choreographed dance scenes for her in a number of films. The marriage was brief, and ended in 1940, although it wouldn't be until 1945 that they divorced. "He loved her as a woman, but not as a dancer. She loved him for his dances, but not as man." 

                    George tried to enlist in the US Army, but was too old. His war consisted of extensive charitable activities intertwined with his Hollywood doings, and culminated in his fourth marriage. Kirstein enlisted and entered Europe as part of the Monuments Men search for stolen European art. He came home bound and determined to create a ballet company. "Ballet with its devotion to making beautiful bodies, was a living artistic link to a devastated European past." NYC under Fiorello LaGuardia was desirous of creating a cultural infrastructure to rival the great cities of Europe. When a member of the mayor's team saw Balanchine's 'Symphony In C' and 'Orpheus', he offered George and Kirstein financial support to expand their Ballet Society into the New York City Ballet. The first performances were at City Center in October, 1948. He built the company from the ground up with people he wanted in all of the administrative positions, where loyalty to him and the company was a prerequisite. He trained his dancers rigorously, was in total command, and forever dominant. For many in the company, it felt like a religion.  A very important addition to the company came when Jerome Robbins joined the NYCB. "Robbins was the only living choreographer that Balanchine truly admired..." Balanchine introduced 'The Nutcracker' in 1954 and then began work with Stravinsky in creating one of his greatest works, 'Agon.' It was enthusiastically  received, and declared to be a masterpiece.

                Cold War competitiveness led NY to build Lincoln Center and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and pushed George to do something he did not wish to do. He took the NYCB to the USSR. The lengthy tour of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, and Baku was a resounding success, but a tremendous emotional drain on a man who had such vivid recollections of the revolution and a visceral distaste for communism. At home, the new home of the Ballet was opened in 1964, giving Balanchine the theater he always wanted. A significant grant from the Ford Foundation put the company on an improved financial footing and allowed George to draw a salary for the first time. 

                Balanchine loved women and often created wondrous works with a specific woman in mind. He bedded many, many of his dancers and fell in and out of love like a teenager. Into his life in the early 60's came one of the great loves of his life, Suzanne Farrell. Born Roberta Ficker near Cincinnati in 1945, she was four decades younger than Balanchine. "Suzanne was no mere infatuation, she was a grand obsession, an all-consuming love that fell upon him with a force and urgency that astounded everyone around him." He cast her was Dulcinea, himself as Don Quixote in the work he had been imagining and planning for decades. "After the premier of 'Don Quixote', he and Farrell set out on a path that would leave his kingdom, and his life, in ruins." He was totally focused on her to the exclusion of the rest of the company. Her refusal to sleep with him just made him try harder. He created ballet after ballet for her driving some of the dancers to quit. When he realized that Suzanne and dancer Paul Mejia were a couple, he began to dismantle Paul's role at NYCB. They married in 1969, and Balanchine fell apart. When he took Suzanne out of a scheduled performance, she and Paul walked away. Balanchine aged a decade overnight and let Jerome Robbins take the lead at the company.

                       The death a few years later of his friend and mentor, Igor Stravinsky, sent him back to work as he planned a major Stravinsky Festival for the NYCB. He spent the months before the June, 1972 week of performances back in command totally dominating the corps as it prepared. It was an astounding success - Balanchine was back on top. As he approached 70, he had accomplished all that he had dreamed of for his ballet company. Suzanne Farrell asked to return and he agreed. A few years later, he suffered a heart attack. A year later, he had triple bypass surgery. He recovered, but unknown to his doctors, he had contracted mad cow disease. His last years were filled with work and aches and pains.  He spent four delirious months in Roosevelt Hospital before the end came on April 30, 1983.

                     I love ballet, and I especially appreciate the NYCB. I am enthralled every time I see a performance. The combination of majestic music, the beauty of the dancers, and the movements are spellbinding. At the same time, I confess I know nothing about music, dance or any of the other abstractions discussed in this book. I suspect I have missed a great deal. I believe that someone who understands it all might appreciate this very long, 752 page biography more than I have. It should be noted that the author is a dancer and I suspect only a dancer could write this. Enjoy.

Anywhere You Run, Morris - B+

                     This is a fascinating novel set in 1964 and featuring a family from Jackson, MS. When it begins, Marigold and her younger sister, Violet, are sorting out their lives in the aftermath of the deaths of their sister and parents. Life is suffocatingly dreadful for people of color in Mississippi. Everyone is looking for the three Freedom Riders who have just gone missing. After a local white thug rapes Violet, she shoots him and leaves town in a hurry. When Marigold's boss from NY leaves for the north after she tells him she's pregnant, she too leaves. Their lives criss-cross again in the south where Jim Crow and hatred still dominate. This a very powerful treatment of racism, a deft thriller, but one with a slight stumble in the end. Nonetheless, well worth it.

Real Tigers, Herron - B

                    At Slough House, where MI-5 dumps their failures, the 'slow horses' are surprised when one of their own, Catherine, is kidnapped. It turns out that the kidnapping is part of an exercise concocted by the Home Minister and Diana Taverner, MI-5's Second Desk. Things go seriously awry when one of the men working for the minister is killed by a colleague. Jackson Lamb and the team rescue Catherine and Lamb manages to keep the proof showing what Taverner has done, assuring future intrigues. This is the third novel in the series that now has the first two on an award winning Apple TV series.

The Shadows of London, Taylor - B

                      The latest Cat Hakesby and James Marwood novel is set in 1671. As always, there are multiple plots throughout. The king is hoping to bed a young French woman, Louise Keroualle, and establish. her as his latest mistress. She goes to her fate and future somewhat reluctantly, but also knowing that Louis XIV is pleased to have a Frenchwoman in the bed of his cousin, the king of England. A murder on a plot of land where Cat is building an almshouse for a businessman brings her and Marwood together in their pursuit of truth. The truth eventually costs Marwood his job with Lord Arlington, but also finally brings him and Cat to the altar. Excellent detail as always about the 17th century.