Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s—and its legacy today. As historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates, the most destructive fires were not set by residents but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords hired 'torches,' mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. The book introduces the term 'brownlining' for the destructive insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.