Thomas Dyja, author of New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation discusses the history of New York City and the people who have helped define it; the city’s path from the fiscal crisis of the late 1970s to today; and the political, economic and cultural forces that have transformed the city.
On the period of New York City history that inspired his latest book: “I came to this great city in 1980, so I’ve been here for quite a while before I decided to write the book, but I wanted to, I started doing it in 2013 at the end of the Bloomberg years, right. De Blasio was going to clearly be the next mayor. So it seemed like we’d had a real kind of book-ended period from Koch coming in to kind of end of the fiscal crisis to Bloomberg was a discrete period to me in New York’s history.”
On his experience of a changing New York City: “It is that crossroads-of-the-world kind of thing, where it’s constantly refreshing with new people coming in from around the world, and especially during this period. For me, I wanted to be in the book business and be a publisher, and I wanted to write eventually. So coming to New York was obvious.”
The episode was recorded on August 4, 2021.
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