Inequality and One City: Bill de Blasio and the New York Experiment, Year One

Bill de Blasio’s election as mayor of New York captured the attention of a typically restless city. But it also made progressives across the country—and, indeed, around the world—sit up and take notice. With unprecedented popular support, de Blasio took office pledging to “put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love.” Based on interviews with dozens of key figures in New York politics, including the mayor himself, Eric Alterman’s new e-book is a rigorous, fascinating and indispensable account of what happened next. It is, as he writes in the preface, “an attempt to move beyond the day-to-day headlines that dominate our political debate. By placing Bill de Blasio’s words, and the actions of his administration, into a political, cultural, social, and intellectual context, we can see just how daunting the task he has set for himself really is: to use the power of the city government to make New York a fairer and more equal place for all its inhabitants, and to do so while executing the fundamental tasks of governance judiciously and efficiently.” If you want to understand what really went down during the first year of “the de Blasio experiment”—the face-off with Governor Cuomo over pre-K, the charter school battle, the epic clash with the NYPD—Eric Alterman has the story. “Eric Alterman’s “Equality and One City: Bill de Blasio and the New York Experiment, Year One” (ebookNation) is a de Blasio booster’s handbook to how much the mayor has already accomplished and a sober reminder — no matter how many poor people vote for empathetic local candidates — of just how much Albany and Washington can scuttle his agenda.” —Sam Roberts, the New York Times