Author: James Goodman Publisher: North Point Press ISBN: 1429928069 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
On July 13, 1977, there was a blackout in New York City. With the dark came excitement, adventure, and fright in subway tunnels, office towers, busy intersections, high-rise stairwells, hotel lobbies, elevators, and hospitals. There was revelry in bars and restaurants, music and dancing in the streets. On block after block, men and women proved themselves heroes by helping neighbors and strangers make it through the night. Unfortunately, there was also widespread looting, vandalism, and arson. Even before police restored order, people began to ask and argue about why. Why did people do what they did when the lights went out? The argument raged for weeks but it was just like the night: lots of heat, little light--a shouting match between those who held fast to one explanation and those who held fast to another. James Goodman cuts between accidents, encounters, conversations, exchanges, and arguments to re-create that night and its aftermath in a dizzying accumulation of detail. Rejecting simple dichotomies and one-dimensional explanations for why people act as they do in moments of conflict and crisis, Goodman illuminates attitudes, ideas, and experiences that have been lost in facile generalizations and analyses. Journalistic re-creation at its most exciting, Blackout provides a whirlwind tour of 1970s New York and a challenge to conventional thinking.
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN: 9781985756533 Category : Languages : en Pages : 58
Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the blackout by NYC residents *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Perhaps the most significant effects of the blackout were those felt by public and private organizations with responsibility for the economic and social activities of New York City and its inhabitants. In many cases, these organizations were ill-prepared for the blackout and much of the chaos, economic loss and individual inconvenience resulted from this lack of preparedness." - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's "Impact Assessment of the 1977 New York Blackout Report" Throughout history, light has been associated with goodness and darkness has been a connotation for evil. This is no coincidence, given that many bad deeds that take place in the world under the cover of darkness. It's no surprise civilizations have always valued the ability to keep light present, even when the sun goes down and the world itself becomes dark. Beginning with the first discovery of fire, men and women have struggled with ways to tame it for their use so that they might have a sense of safety at night. Just as a roaring fire lit at the mouth of a cave would keep out four-legged predators, so it was widely believed that electric lights could discourage marauders of the two-legged kind. But what happens when the awesome - and occasionally awful - power of nature snatches light away from those who depend on it to feel safe? This question was answered in a most dismaying way in July 1977 when New York City was plunged into darkness for over 24 hours following a thunderstorm. New Yorkers across the city quickly learned that without the light, they could fall prey to looting and violence of just about every kind imaginable. It did not help that this disaster occurred at a time when the city was under more stress than usual due to a poor economy and frequent reports of a new murder by a serial killer calling himself the "Son of Sam." On the other side, for some, the opportunity to take things without much danger of getting caught was about survival, a chance to stock up on items that they felt they needed but could not afford to buy. For others, the looting was a way to blow off steam and strike back at what they perceived to be an unjust system that kept them from having the things they wanted in life. There was even a third group comprised of people who told themselves that what they were doing was not really stealing since the stores were left unguarded and someone else would take the items if they did not. Working near those bent on destruction during that terrible night were men and women trying to save and restore what was being lost. Police, firefighters and workers from Con Ed electric company toiled away to try to restore some semblance of order to the city, but unfortunately, by the time they accomplished their tasks, each group had lost more than it won. The police arrested thousands but knew that they missed thousands more. The firefighters put out many fires, but many more spread their destructive flames through homes and businesses of people just trying to make a living. And those men who worked through the night to restore power quickly found themselves accused of negligence for letting it go out in the first place. Overall, the blackout yielded many losers and few winners, for even those who got away with looting and arson would have to live with their own consciences. In the wake of the blackout, Mayor Abe Beame may have put it best when he complained, "We've seen our citizens subjected to violence, vandalism, theft and discomfort. The Blackout has threatened our safety and has seriously impacted our economy. We've been needlessly subjected to a night of terror in many communities that have been wantonly looted and burned. The costs when finally tallied will be enormous."
Author: Will Hermes Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0374533547 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
Chronicles five epochal years of music in the Big Apple against a backdrop of the period's high crime, limited government resources and low rents, tracing the formations of key sounds while evaluating the contributions of such artists as Willie Colón, Bruce Springsteen and Grandmaster Flash.
Author: Brian Selznick Publisher: Scholastic ISBN: 1407166557 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 325
Book Description
Ben's story takes place in 1977 and is told in words. Rose's story in 1927 is told entirely in pictures. Ever since his mother died, Ben feels lost. At home with her father, Rose feels alone. When Ben finds a mysterious clue hidden in his mother's room, both children risk everything to find what's missing.
Author: Garth Risk Hallberg Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0385353782 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 1109
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A mystery that reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power in New York and "captures the city’s dangerous, magnetic allure" (The New York Times). • Streaming now on Apple TV+ “As close to a great American novel as this century has produced.” —Stephen King New York City, 1976. Meet Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city’s great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown’s punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor—and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve. When the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever. City on Fire is an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about art and truth and rock ’n’ roll: about what people need from each other in order to live—and about what makes the living worth doing in the first place.
Author: Keith R. A. DeCandido Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1534421262 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
THE DARK IS COMING. . . . New York City in 1977 is vampire heaven. Serial killer Son of Sam is often blamed for their hits, and a citywide blackout gives them free reign of the streets, allowing them to get away with murder. Spike and his beloved Drusilla are in the Big Apple taking advantage of the situation, as is Vampire Slayer Nikki Wood, who has hunkered down with her son, Robin, in a Times Square apartment where she thinks they'll be safe. But no matter where she goes, Nikki has to watch her back. Spike has only one thing on his mind: to slay a slayer. Adding to Spike's list of challenges is a corrupt local vampire community that catches wind of his presence, and when they start messing with him, things get bloody interesting.
Author: David E. Nye Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262288338 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Blackouts—whether they result from military planning, network failure, human error, or terrorism—offer snapshots of electricity's increasingly central role in American society. Where were you when the lights went out? At home during a thunderstorm? During the Great Northeastern Blackout of 1965? In California when rolling blackouts hit in 2000? In 2003, when a cascading power failure left fifty million people without electricity? We often remember vividly our time in the dark. In When the Lights Went Out, David Nye views power outages in America from 1935 to the present not simply as technical failures but variously as military tactic, social disruption, crisis in the networked city, outcome of political and economic decisions, sudden encounter with sublimity, and memories enshrined in photographs. Our electrically lit-up life is so natural to us that when the lights go off, the darkness seems abnormal. Nye looks at America's development of its electrical grid, which made large-scale power failures possible and a series of blackouts from military blackouts to the “greenout” (exemplified by the new tradition of “Earth Hour”), a voluntary reduction organized by environmental organizations. Blackouts, writes Nye, are breaks in the flow of social time that reveal much about the trajectory of American history. Each time one occurs, Americans confront their essential condition—not as isolated individuals, but as a community that increasingly binds itself together with electrical wires and signals.
Author: Meg Medina Publisher: Candlewick Press ISBN: 0763679984 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
While violence runs rampant throughout New York, a teenage girl faces danger within her own home in Meg Medina's riveting coming-of-age novel. Nora Lopez is seventeen during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Nora’s family life isn’t going so well either: her bullying brother, Hector, is growing more threatening by the day, her mother is helpless and falling behind on the rent, and her father calls only on holidays. All Nora wants is to turn eighteen and be on her own. And while there is a cute new guy who started working with her at the deli, is dating even worth the risk when the killer likes picking off couples who stay out too late? Award-winning author Meg Medina transports us to a time when New York seemed balanced on a knife-edge, with tempers and temperatures running high, to share the story of a young woman who discovers that the greatest dangers are often closer than we like to admit — and the hardest to accept.
Author: Marshall Berman Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 9781861893383 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 474
Book Description
Acclaimed historian Berman and journalist Berger gather a stellar group of writers and photographers who combine their energies to weave a rich tale of New York Citys struggle, excitement, and wonder.
Author: Mike McAlary Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504021320 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 194
Book Description
A shocking true story of corruption and crime in the ranks of the NYPD in the worst police scandal since the revelations of Fred Serpico In the 1970s, New York City’s 77th Precinct was known as “the Alamo.” In Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, Brooklyn—neighborhoods notorious for drugs and violent crime—some of the worst criminals wore police uniforms and carried badges. Henry Winter was a good cop when he first entered the infamous 77th station house that was already infamous as a home to the dregs of the NYPD. Before long, he and fellow officer Anthony Magno found themselves deeply entrenched in the Alamo’s culture of extortion, lies, corruption, and crime—and they were regularly supplementing their incomes by ripping off thieves, drug dealers, junkies, and honest citizens alike. But the gravy train couldn’t stay on the rails forever. Winter and Magno were caught and faced a devastating choice: They could betray their crooked friends and colleagues by helping investigators expose the rot that festered at the Alamo’s core—or spend the next several years behind bars. In Buddy Boys, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Mike McAlary blows the doors off 1 of the worst scandals ever to taint New York’s uniformed guardians, the men and women sworn to protect and serve the populace. Blistering, shocking, and powerful, it’s a frightening look inside the NYPD and an eye-opening exploration of the daily temptations that can seduce a good cop over to the dark side.
Author: James Goodman
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Author: Will Hermes
Author: Brian Selznick
Author: Garth Risk Hallberg
Author: Keith R. A. DeCandido
Author: David E. Nye
Author: Meg Medina
Author: Marshall Berman
Author: Mike McAlary