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Bench Ansfield

@benchansfield.bsky.social

asst prof of history at temple // they/them BORN IN FLAMES: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City (W.W. Norton, August 19) https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324093510

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Steven Nelson@stevenel.bsky.social · 3w ago

On the newest DIY Democracy, I spoke with @benchansfield.bsky.social about the kindling, the fuels, and the spark of the 1970s arson wave, and what it means for us today.

DIY Democracy: “Not the Government, Just Its Money” - The Role of Insurance Regulation in Creating the ‘Urban Crisis'

For this episode, I spoke with Professor Bench Ansfield, author of the recent book, .  In the book and the interview, we talked about the kindling (decades of redlining, deindustrialization,...

diydemocracy.libsyn.com

Caleb Heeringa@calebheeringa.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Cannot recommend "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and The Remaking of the American City" enough. One of the best nonfiction books I've read in years & vital to understanding the hidden role of the insurance industry in our lives. @benchansfield.bsky.social www.pulitzer.org/finalists/be...

Pulitzer Finalist: Bench Ansfield

An elegantly written and scholarly account of large-scale arson instigated by landlords that wiped out wide swaths of apartment buildings and tenements in New York City from 1968 to the early 1980s, e...

pulitzer.org

Brian Goldstone@brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I don't quite have words yet. I'm stunned, grateful, disoriented. My deepest, deepest thanks to the five families without whom this book would not exist. It has been the honor of my life to know and learn from you.

Graphic announcing the Pulitzer Prize winner for General Nonfiction to There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone
Laura McGrath@lbmcgrath.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“If we are to truly come to grips with contemporary fiction, literary agents & their logic of fit are essential parts of the story. While Middlemen may concentrate on the powerful few who do it best, McGrath offers a new & important way to orient our understanding of the novel today.” More at LARB!

The Power of Fit | Los Angeles Review of Books

Laura B. McGrath’s new book looks at how the largely invisible work of literary agents shapes American literature.

lareviewofbooks.org

Bench Ansfield@benchansfield.bsky.social · 4mo ago

What a week🫨 Last night in Philly I got to watch the livestream of the @latimesfob awards, where Born in Flames won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. It was announced Oscars-style—really gets the heart racing. I was grateful to be with dear friends who know how to shriek.

Image of book coverPhoto of author on a rooftop holding livestream video via cell phoneText from LA Times article: award in the history category for "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and theRemaking of the American City," which exposes a pattern of landlords setting residential fires to collect insurance payouts, they said, "It's a scary time to be a historian in the United States." "Our field, like so many other fields, is under attack," Ansfield said. "To understand the crises in front of us, we have to understand our history."
Kian Goh@kiangoh.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Please read @charmainechua.bsky.social on the warehouse as not so much a space of storage as it is a switch (turning off and on movement of capital and goods) and a trap (for low wage workers) and, now, a space of literal DHS incarceration. placesjournal.org/article/the-...

The Warehouse, in Plain Sight

That concrete box off the freeway wasn’t designed for storage so much as capture. It’s a disappearing machine. We need to see it clearly.

placesjournal.org

Bench Ansfield@benchansfield.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Please join us for a *free* student-led walking tour of the Columbia Ave uprising, which coursed through North Philly in Aug 1964 in response to police violence April 20th at noon RSVP and details at link below

Bild
Zee Thee Mischievous@ziajd.blacksky.app · 4mo ago

Just read a great passage last night about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in Bench Ansfield's @benchansfield.bsky.social "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City."

Screenshot from Bench Ansfield's book "Born Into Fire." The text reads: History teaches us that arson can be an indicator of macroeconomic flux. A week after 1911’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, trade unionist Rose Schneiderman bellowed to an audience of mourners, “The life of men and women is so cheap, and property is so sacred!” That infamous New York fire, which was suspected of being incendiary, killed 146 garment workers, many doomed to death by the factory owners’ policy of locking the doors to the exits and stairways. The fire prompted a referendum on working conditions under industrial capitalism, and Schneiderman’s indictment of property’s exaltation at workers’ expense won broad currency. The Triangle fire was a watershed in American politics, galvanizing a reform movement that, in turn, helped catalyze the New Deal.16 The Triangle Shirtwaist conflagration is remembered for unearthing contradictions that seethed under the surface of a nascent Fordism, the regime of mass production and mass consumption that drove the U.S. economy from World War I through the 1970s. What that fire was to Fordism, the 1970s arson wave was to financialization. Whether called post-Fordism or neoliberalism or financialized capitalism, the new era was characterized by global capital mobility, market triumphalism, transnational supply chains, the rise of service work over mass production, and a drastic reduction in economic security for the average worker. Corporate firms fled for the U.S. South, the suburbs, and beyond the nation’s shores, pulled by a non-unionized and often migrant-based labor force, and pushed by the newly sacrosanct injunction to prioritize shareholder value above all else.17
Rebecca Fachner@rebeccafachner.bsky.social · 4mo ago

It’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Day. The fact that everyone knows about the Titanic and no one knows about the largest industrial disaster of the era says a lot about our priorities and how we view class and labor