Join our September 25 online celebration of REBUILD, a free service that connects formerly incarcerated individuals to a therapist of color. We’ll hear from program participants and graduates, give updates about the first four years of REBUILD, and discuss ways to support and continue the program.

My fucking god

In a world riven by inequality and devastated by climate + ecological crisis, what would it take for "green industrial policy" to empower the working class in Global North + South, and be truly green? New @cplusc.bsky.social report by me and Isabel Estevez (1/3) t.co/78sQQe4d1g

Excited to see my review of @benchansfield.bsky.social's stunning, crucial book in today's NYT. Gift link:

Photo captured just before Sal drooled all over the book review of Born in Flames in the Sunday NYT

Mike Glass and I argue for @phenomenalworld.bsky.social that we’ve tried the #abundance incentive-based approach to housing crises before. But lack of oversight + incentives produced fraud, profiteering, and inflated rents -- and the Trump family fortune. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/add...

Brutal. Photojournalist Madison Swart is doing a longterm project documenting the presence and tactics of ICE and federal agents at 26 Federal Plaza. Follow: @madisonswart.bsky.social Like most photographers, their best work is on Instagram: madisonswart

Curious how the Abundance movement holds up to historical analysis? Leave it to @charlotteerosen.bsky.social to break it down. "Born in Flames makes for a refreshing, historically grounded retort to a recent wave of anti-regulatory rhetoric...the 'Abundance' movement."

for @proteanmag.com, I reviewed @benchansfield.bsky.social BORN IN FLAMES, which I found an instructive text for taking a whack at the Abundance movement™️ proteanmag.com/2025/09/07/i...

Charlotte E. Rosen reviews Bench Ansfield's new book "Born in Flames"—a revelatory historical analysis of the systematic, profitable, and deadly arson schemes perpetrated by landlords and insurance companies in the Bronx of the 1970s. proteanmag.com/2025/09/07/i...

The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents. In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.

This historian's first book! Congratulations, Bench! "As historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the most destructive of the [Bronx] fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts."

I am once again asking you to stop sending us money. But we do need your time. ⏰ zohranfornyc.com/events

BORN IN FLAMES is a NYT Editors' Choice title

August reads! Favorites in bold. #BookSky

And if you're curious to know more about how to think with both fire and insurance, and use it to open up big questions of US history, I can't recommend @benchansfield.bsky.social new book more highly: wwnorton.com/books/978132...

Orisanmi Burton and author Garrett Felber on "A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre" www.akpress.org/a-continuous...

The 21st century American city was forged in the embers of the 1970s arson wave. www.hnn.us/article/life... Read an excerpt from @benchansfield.bsky.social’s “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.”

congratulations @benchansfield.bsky.social on the publication of Born in Flames! thank you for this brilliant study! I’ll be teaching Born in Flames this winter in my black geographies seminar ✌🏾!

Just read the NYT review, got super excited, and ordered it! So timely to my work at @cplusc.bsky.social on if FAIR Plans are the answer to today's insurance crises.

Come hear @fahrenthold.bsky.social and @phoebepetrovic.bsky.social discuss reporting in an era of spin, lies and disappearing data (w/ moderator @tamiafowlkes.bsky.social) at our 9/26 conference. Registration: ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/2025-journal...

Today’s Executive Order creating a *nationwide* military “quick reaction force” and setting up an online portal to permit random fascist vigilantes to join soldiers is one of the scariest things I’ve seen in U.S. politics in my adult life. Why is it not getting more attention?

I’m not teaching my US since 1965 grad course until next fall, but I just couldn’t help myself. Here are the books I’m thinking of assigning. Let me know what y’all think! 🗃️

The Philly SEPTA cuts are dire. As someone who works at a university, I’m wondering if AAUP chapters & unions will need to organize rideshare carpools just so faculty & staff can get to work this fall (among other organizing ofc)

I don't have an updated number to share but there's one more week left in my drive. You can however continue to donate new or gently used books to Bluestockings beyond September 1.

Read this superb review of @benchansfield.bsky.social's "Born in Flames."

Listen to @andrewpopp.bsky.social !!

So grateful for this very sharp review of Born in Flames in @thebaffler.com Thank you @mfriedrichnyc.bsky.social ! !

In the 1970s, landlords burned their buildings for profit, displacing thousands of tenants in poor neighborhoods. For @thebaffler.com, I wrote about @benchansfield.bsky.social's excellent “Born in Flames” and the consequences of the arson wave. thebaffler.com/latest/ring-...

Thanks Lit Hub! lithub.com/what-should-...

‘At a 2015 party to promote a planned luxury complex… guests sipped cocktails and ordered “Bronx Is Burning” salmon rolls. The continuity becomes clear: Disinvestment and redevelopment are not opposites but phases of the same cycle of dispossession.’ On @benchansfield.bsky.social’s new book:

The astounding triumph Born in Flames by @benchansfield.bsky.social is out! The rare work of history that changes common sense - in this case the burning of the Bronx and other cities in the 70s - while also making revelatory moves for theory and historiography. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/b...

Congrats @alybatt.bsky.social proud to share a pub day with your opus

It's an incredible book; you should feel immensely proud. I hope it gets the recognition and readership it so richly deserves.

@benchansfield.bsky.social and I have known each other since 2014, when I was a wee first-year PhD student. Not much has delighted me quite as much as seeing Bench get their flowers for their exciting new book on the Bronx arson crisis. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/b...

During the 1970s, an arson wave ravaged poor communities across the US. Some lost 80% of their housing. Residents were blamed. In reality, landlords—paid by insurers and enabled by the state—drove this arson-for-profit epidemic. 

I reviewed @benchansfield.bsky.social's revelatory BORN IN FLAMES:

Can't express how much this review of BORN IN FLAMES by Brian Goldstone in the NYT means to me. Goldstone's THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US is among the most important books about housing in the US in the 21st cent. Thanks @brian-goldstone.bsky.social for this stunning review. BORN IN FLAMES is out now!

Today is publication day and I can't wait for my pre-ordered copy to arrive. CONGRATULATIONS BENCH! Get your own copy today and read it with others.

"The vague impression that Bronxites burned down their own borough endures, while the vast fortunes made were forgotten." -- @benchansfield.bsky.social via @newyorker.com

Exhilarating for BORN IN FLAMES to receive a feature review in the pages of the @newyorker.com. Immerwahr and I come to different conclusions about racial capitalism and the burning years, but I hope our debate will be fruitful for others. -->

people love to claim racial capitalism isn't a good analytic and then as evidence describe something that is quite literally explained by a framework of racial capitalism

“Ansfield has found a way to emphasize the moral in ‘moral hazard.’” Dan Piepenbring on Born in Flames, by Bench Ansfield (@benchansfield.bsky.social). buff.ly/jk0wJBK

Hi, just to let you know that as a historian I’m terrified. Like “this is going to get so much worse so much faster than most realize” terrified🙃

Stunning! And, accurate. About Bench's book which has already been called, "A young historian’s superlative debut." I told @benchansfield.bsky.social I thought they should put this NY Post headline on a t-shirt!

Getting "greedy landlords" printed in the NY Post is surreal. Never thought I'd be in the tabloids.

Philly-specific zine on responding to ICE raids

It’s live! My new zine “How to Report ICE and Help Keep Our Neighbors Safe” is available in NYC and a Philly editions!! You can download and print both from here: drive.google.com/drive/folder... **Be sure to set your printer settings to print the zine at 100%!**

some rare good news: a Georgia judge has dismissed the Cop City domestic terrorism charges against Jamie Mariscano in DeKalb County, noting that the "Attorney General's Office appears to have delayed this matter in order to gain a tactical advantage over the defense."

Got my advance reader copies of Living in a DAISY Age yesterday! They look amazing! It’s hard to put into words how I feel holding a physical copy of my book 🤯 Preorder: www.simonandschuster.com/books/Living...

“Landlords hired kids—‘torches,’ in industry argot—to see that their properties suffered untimely accidents. With unemployment high, a torch was easy to find.” Dan Piepenbring on Born in Flames, by Bench Ansfield.