Lunch & Learn: Fear City

Join the NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) each month for our virtual Lunch & Learn Series - an intimate conversation with agency staff and special guests focusing on the collections of the Municipal Archives and Library and the history of New York City.

On October 9th, join Dr. Kim Phillips-Fein, the Robert Gardiner-Kenneth T. Jackson Professor of History at Columbia University, for an in-depth discussion about her book Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics.

When the news broke that New York City was on the brink of fiscal collapse, few believed it was possible. Yet, the city was indeed billions of dollars in the red, with no way to pay back its debts. Fear City tells the remarkable story of the financial crisis that engulfed the city, permanently transformed New York, and reshaped ideas about government across America.

A sweeping history of some of New York City’s most tumultuous times and an origin story of the politics of austerity, Fear City is essential for anyone seeking to understand the resurgence of fiscal conservatism today.

About the Author:

Kim Phillips-Fein, a lifelong New Yorker, is the Robert Gardiner-Kenneth T. Jackson Professor of History at Columbia University, where she teaches twentieth-century American history and the history of New York City. She is also the author of Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal, the story of how a small group of American businessmen organized to resist New Deal economics and built a political movement.

A recipient of grants from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities, she has written for The Nation, Dissent, The Baffler, The Atlantic, and The New York Times, among other publications.