Customer Reviews

Blackout

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone who has experienced last summer's blackout and is old enough to remember the previous Big One - 1977 - ought to read "Blackout" just to transport himself back into the era: How different things were!
Those who aren't old enough or weren't there should do the same for educational reasons. We are frequently blinded by today's events and forget how things got the way they are.
James Goodman does a great job reminding us of the many good and bad parts in our fairly recent past - and you don't have to be a New Yorker to appreciate the story he tells.

It has been more than a quarter century since that fateful night. Most folks have long since forgotten all about it. But the New York City blackout of 1977 is an event worth remembering. Who or what was the real cause of the blackout? And what prompted some people in a number of neighborhoods around the city to engage in looting, vandalism and arson that would in the end destroy over 2000 stores citywide?
As author James Goodman points out, these were not the best of times in the City of New York. Crime was out of control, unemployment was high, and confidence in the political leadership of the city was extremely low. And to make matters much worse the city was suffering the effects of debilitating heat wave. The blackout it seems came at just the wrong time.
Using an interesting and at times dizzying writing style, Goodman has a dozen or more storylines going at any one time. He presents the story from all sides. What was the Mayor saying and doing about this crisis? And the suits at Con Edison....how were they responding? What motivated those doing the looting? And how did store owners try to protect their property? How did the police respond and were the measures they took correct and appropriate? And when it was all over what was reaction of community leaders, the media and the politicians? So many questions.
James Goodman has given us a remarkable and thought provoking book. I certainly enjoyed it and if you are a student of history I suspect you will as well.

His style captures your full attention from the very first page and I became fully involved. The dilemmas in this book are very touching, keeps your mind involved as he shifts between incidents and events taking place concurrently. He has brought them all to life so touchingly. One cannot but once again marvel at the complexity of human nature. Greatly recommended.

I had been looking forward to this book for some time and was quasi-disappointed. The book is written is short bursts of information, rarely attributed to any person by name, that detail the 1977 NYC blackout. Emphasis, of course, is placed on the looting and the aftermath, with a few sprinklings of anecdotes from Broadway and the Mets home game, but most of the narrative takes places in the more impoverished neighborhood. This lacks the "big picture" insight that a book devoted to this one event deserves. What, for instance, happened in 1977 Times Square? Not even mentioned! The blackout is covered in much more detail in the amazing 2005 Jonathan Mahler book LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BRONX IS BURNING: 1977, BASEBALL, POLITICS, AND THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF A CITY and Spike Lee's underrated 1999 film SUMMER OF SAM. The book naturally becomes the editorial page arguments over the actions of the looters - did they do it as a cry for help from the depths of poverty and hunger, or did they do just because they wanted to steal. Plus, there shoulda been pictures!

This is a book of 225 pages and over 53 'mini-chapters' of "patched" newspaper quotations and resident & looter observations of the NYC Blackout of Summer 1977.

One would expect a nice, concise summary of what was experienced and remembered as a teenager that summer. Regrettably, however, this book brought back only limited memories and even less of an explanation of why it happened.

To author Goodman and his way of writing, it's always "the director of Con Ed said...", or, "the president of that group said...". Don't they have names? Provide them. With significant saliency on the pertinent electric utility provider (Con Ed) and not one name mentioned. It's always "the mayor" and hardly ever "Mayor Beame". Why? True, maybe trite, but for non-New Yorkers, and even us, I found this as annoying and obfuscating.

Keep the story simple, yes. But when even I as an engineer after reading _Blackout_ am still uncertain as to the actual cause, most likely because the author was just jumping around with his style too much and never focused, ...nah.

This book never has any live current running through any of its pages.