The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - A sweeping chronicle of four tumultuous years in 1980s New York that changed the city forever--and anticipated the forces that would soon divide the nation--from the bestselling author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning

"A rip-roaring, sweeping, essential work of history . . . a deeply reported and brilliantly observed account of how the modern city was born and why all of us continue to live with the results."--Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of King: A Life

New York entered 1986 as a city reborn. Record profits on Wall Street sent waves of money splashing across Manhattan, bringing a battered city roaring back to life.

But it also entered 1986 as a city whose foundation was beginning to crack. Thousands of New Yorkers were sleeping in the streets, addicted to drugs, dying of AIDS, or suffering from mental illnesses. Nearly one-third of the city's Black and Hispanic residents were living below the federal poverty line. Long-simmering racial tensions threatened to boil over.

The events of the next four years would split the city open. Howard Beach. Black Monday. Tawana Brawley. The crack epidemic. The birth of ACT UP. The Central Park jogger. The release of Do the Right Thing. And a cast of outsized characters--Ed Koch, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Rudy Giuliani, Larry Kramer--would compete to shape the city's future while building their own mythologies.

The Gods of New York is a kaleidoscopic and deeply immersive portrait of a city whose identity was suddenly up for grabs: Could it be both the great working-class city that lifted up immigrants from around the world and the money-soaked capital of global finance? Could it retain a civic culture--a common idea of what it meant to be a New Yorker--when the rich were building a city of their own and vast swaths of its citizens were losing faith in the systems meant to protect them? New York City was one thing at the dawn of 1986; it would be something very different as 1989 came to a close. This is the story of how that happened.

Author: Jonathan Mahler
Publisher: Random House
Published: 08/12/2025
Pages: 464
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.58lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.00w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9780525510635


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/02/2025
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2025
Shelf Awareness 08/23/2025

About the Author
Jonathan Mahler is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of the bestselling Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, which was adapted as an ESPN miniseries, and The Challenge, a New York Times Notable Book. His journalism has received numerous awards and been featured in The Best American Sports Writing. He lives in Brooklyn