Description:
Finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in History
Winner of the 2026 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
Winner of the 2026 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction
Winner of the 2026 Francis Parkman Prize for the Best Book in American History from the Society of American Historians
Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians
Winner of the New York City Book Award
Winner of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award
Nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Nonfiction
Finalist for the Gotham Book Prize
Shortlisted for the 2026 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2025
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2025
The Skipped History Podcast Best Book of the Year
"[R]evelatory...Deeply researched and masterfully told." --Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review
The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s--and its legacy today.
Brief description: Bench Ansfield is an assistant professor of history at Temple University. Ansfield holds a PhD in American studies from Yale University and won the Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American history from the Society of American Historians. They live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Review Quotes: [O]utstanding... A strength of Born in Flames is the care and finesse with which Ansfield treats the lives that the fires scorched--much as Robert Caro, in The Power Broker, tended to Bronx residents whose worlds were run through by reckless mid-century highway construction...The book's feckless rings of white-collar crooks give it a touch of true-crime intrigue, and its confrontations between underdog tenants and the industry help explain our present residential calamity.--Michael Friedrich "The Baffler"