South Bronx Rising - 2nd Edition by Jill Jonnes (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Jill Jonnes's recounting of the rise, fall, and resurrection of the Bronx has become a classic of urban history. In this new edition, she describes in a new final chapter the extraordinary and monumental rebuilding of the borough by the grass-roots groups that was just getting underway in 1984. The original book was hailed as a vivid history of the Bronx from its origins as colonial farmlands to the borough's 1980s status as one of the nation's foremost urban disasters. The book tells the colorful story of the Bronx, starting with its development as a New York suburb and boomtown when hundreds of thousands of German, Irish, Italians, and above all, Jewish immigrants flowed into the borough to raise their families.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, assisted by his powerful lieutenant, Boss Ed Flynn, built vast Democratic majorities in the polyglot Bronx into political domination of New York and the nation. After World War II, the Bronx underwent its second boom, beginning with emigrants from Puerto Rico and blacks displaced from Manhattan. On their heels came the camp followers of modern urban poverty: drug dealers, real estate pirates, arsonists. By the mid-1970s the Bronx was burning. Block after block, once given over to working- and middle-class family life, was now utterly destroyed, abandoned, given up on. The teeming, populous Bronx had turned into an American urban desert.

This borough, which in its heyday had produced such notable Americans as Clifford Odets, Paddy Cheyefsky, Lauren Bacall, Herman Wouk, Jules Feiffer, Jake LaMotta, Stanley Kubrick, E.L. Doctorow, Neil Simon, and Tony Curtis, now lay in ashes, visible to us mainly as a dreadful object lesson.

Yet change was in sight. Even while the worst destruction was taking place, new forces were rising to set aside or remake the tired machinery of government, allying such institutions as the Catholic Church, insurance companies, and dedicated non-profits to rally the Bronx and turn the tide of urban thinking. In her new final chapter, Dr. Jonnes describes the triumph of the grass-roots groups as they fulfilled their great dream of rebuilding these devastated neighborhoods.

Review Quotes

"The definitive account...Jill Jones tells us how the epidemic was contained and the Bronx was in large measure rebuilt."-----Nathan Glazer

Jonnes...give us glimpses of how this turnaround occurred, once again focusing on the people who live there. She tells the story of how the South Bronx was rebuilt, largely by the efforts of its people, working through numerous community organizations.-- "--The Bronx County Historical Society Journal"

"Every place needs a chronicler, and Jill Jonnes is the chronicler par excellence of the South Bronx. Updating her definitive history of the South Bronx (We're Still Here), Jonnes has traced New York's famous and infamous borough on its roller-coaster ride from prosperity down to devastation and back up to vitality. In the process she has provided us with a balanced assessment of the rebirth of the Bronx and the gripping stories of the people who have helped bring it back."-----Alexander von Hoffman, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University

About the Author

Daughter of American civil servant abroad, Jill Jonnes grew up in many countries. She graduated from Barnard College and the Columbia School of Journalism, has written for The Record (Bergen, N.J.), and free-lances for numerous magazines. Married to a physician, she now lives in Baltimore.