Prologue -- 1986 -- 1987 -- 1988 -- 1989 -- Afterword

"New York City entered 1986 as a city reborn, with record profits on Wall Street sending waves of money splashing across Manhattan and bringing a once-bankrupt, reeling city back to life. But it also entered 1986 as a city divided. Nearly one-third of the city's Black and Hispanic residents were living below the federal poverty line. Thousands of New Yorkers were sleeping in the streets-and in many cases addicted to drugs, dying of AIDS, or suffering from mental illness. The manufacturing jobs that had once sustained a thriving middle class had vanished. Long-simmering racial tensions threatened to boil over. Over the next four years, a singular confluence of events-involving a cast of outsized, unforgettable characters-would widen those divisions into chasms. Ed Koch. Donald Trump. Al Sharpton. The Central Park Five. Spike Lee. Rudy Giuliani. Howard Beach. Tawana Brawley. The Preppy Murder. Jimmy Breslin. Do the Right Thing, Wall Street, crack, the AIDS epidemic, and, of course, ready to pour gasoline on every fire-the tabloids. In The Gods of New York, Jonathan Mahler tells the story of these convulsive, defining years"-- Provided by publisher