During the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through cities across the United States, destroying large portions of neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. Popular memory confuses the arson wave with the 1960s uprisings. Yet these fires were lit not for protest, but for profit, most of which flowed into the aptly named FIRE industries—finance, insurance, and real estate. Bench Ansfield’s Born in Flames reveals a view of financialization from the ground up: how it was felt, contested, and transfigured by those far from the fray of Wall Street. The book centers on the Bronx, known in these years as the “arson capital of the world.” Tens of thousands of housing units were lost between 1968 and the early 1980s. The firestorm only came to an end because those whose homes lay in its path built up their tenant power and brought it to bear upon their legislators, landlords, and lenders.

The torching of vast swaths of the American city may strike some as a bizarre event in the distant past. Yet this is very much a history of the present. Long neglected by historians, the arson wave lays bare late-twentieth century shifts in political economy that shape our here and now. Deep within the arson wave was forged the metropolis we know: one defined by volcanic real estate booms, economy-cratering busts, and an unrelenting downswing in housing stability.

Minju Bae, Assistant Professor History at New York University, joins in conversation.