Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing, and author Jonathan Mahler for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

I grew up on Long Island, just outside of New York City. In the late 1980s, I was in my early twenties. Although much of my life at the time was consumed by working full-time and attending college at night full-time, I occasionally made forays into “The City” with friends. This was before what we term the “Disney-fication” of New York. It was a colorful city with colorful people, but at the same time, it could be frightening to kids from the suburbs.

Many of the events in Jonathan Mahler’s The Gods of New York I remember quite well. Our news source was in New York City, so the news was largely oriented to there. Something particularly heinous had to happen on Long Island for us to get any coverage on television.

Mahler stated that he was inspired to write this book following the 2016 election. I am sure he thought the same as me, “How could anyone who lived in New York during the late 1980s and early 1990s vote for this man?” I think the root of it comes near the end of the book. Selective amnesia is okay when the candidate hates the same people that you do.

Many people don’t remember the dire straits New York City was in before Ed Koch was elected Mayor in 1977. I only have a vague memory of an old man named Abe Beame, who was the mayor before him. For most of my years that I was aware of current events, he was the Mayor of New York City. Mahler paints Koch as a complicated man in many ways, who thrived in his job as Mayor. He didn’t even consider it a stepping-stone to something else. He just loved being the Mayor of New York.

Mahler gives him credit where it’s due. Koch did a lot of things right. He also made many missteps. This book focuses on the years 1986-1990, and it was a tumultuous time in New York City, particularly for race relations. The AIDS epidemic was also in high gear, claiming lives at a rate that was quite scary, especially since there were no treatments yet. We now know that Koch was a closeted gay man, but at the time, he protected that secret for all it was worth. Knowing that now, while reading the book, I can see where his choices not to do much to address the epidemic were problematic. At the same time, he did make some efforts that were constrained by City budgets.

The slices of life in New York City at that time consisted of names familiar to those of us who lived there, but not people around the nation – yet. They would become household names later on. Trump is here with his bombastic drive to memorialize himself in every way possible before everything came crashing down around him. Mahler doesn’t get into Trump the person so much as Trump the piss-poor businessman.

As I read through the rise of Rev. Al Sharpton, Alton Maddox, and Vernon Mason as civil rights activists rising in the public conscience due to the numerous racial conflicts in New York City during this time, I kept saying to myself, “Yeah, but then there was Tawana…” Mahler gets to that, and it brought down their credibility as well as cast doubts in white neighborhoods afterwards. If there was a crime where race could be considered a factor, it was easy to see where the lines would be drawn, and the Black community and all of New York City have suffered for that.

Giuliani is here too, from his rise as the Prosecuting attorney for the Southern District of New York to setting his sights on a political career. Mahler makes the case that Giuliani’s reputation as a prosecutor was undeserved. At the end of the book, despite losing to David Dinkins in the Mayoral election of 1989, you could see where Giuliani was going to go with a campaign that would serve to divide the city along racial lines, all for his own benefit. The book perfectly sets the stage for what would happen during Giuliani’s term as Mayor to people like Amadou Diallo.

One thing I didn’t know prior to reading The Gods of New York was how involved Anthony Fauci was in the early research into AIDS treatments. I only heard of him during the COVID epidemic, but he was there in the early days. The AIDS activist organization ACT-UP prodded him into changing how clinical trials were being run in the hopes of saving lives. I also didn’t remember all of the details of Koch’s attempts to force some of the homeless into mental hospitals against their will. I’m still not entirely sure he was wrong. However, it was pretty hard to do when Reagan had slashed mental health services and closed many of the places that used to house and treat them.

There’s also plenty of gossip and real crime. In addition to Brawley, Mahler dives deeper into Howard Beach, Yusef Hawkins, the Preppy Murder, and the Central Park Five. If these stories aren’t familiar to you, I can reassure you that Mahler hits the mark with them, going by my own recollections. Spike Lee makes an appearance, too, as his rise as a movie producer came with his thought-provoking films about life for Black New Yorkers.

The Gods of New York deals with topics that are typical problems in cities this large: race relations, homelessness, policing, budgets, development, and more. I think you’ll have a better understanding of how we are at this current place in the world after reading this. Many of the people who have been in the news over the past ten years or so have roots in this time. The egos of the 1980s never really went away, and some of the people here believed their own publicity a little too much.