South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City [Paperback]

Jill Jonnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0823221997 | ISBN-13: 978-0823221998 | Edition: 2

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 481 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; 2 edition (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823221997
• ISBN-13: 978-0823221998
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Bronx Tear, March 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City (Paperback)

'South Bronx Rising' pulls no punches and painstankingly charts the penultimate urban destruction of the South Bronx.In someone else's hands, this story that charts the downfall of what was once a bountiful hinterland north of Manhatten, could have got bogged down in accusations and boring political meanderings. Instead, the story of the utter deveastation of what was at one time the playground of the princes of Manhatten, comes alive with a depth of feeling and poignancy, only someone who got into the blood and guts of the people of the Bronx could have written.
Kudos to Jonnes for evoking the 'neighborhood.' For that is what permeates this story of the downslide of a dream.
The Bronx started out as an oasis for countless immigrants who clawed there way out of the lower Eastside tenemants of NYC. First the Irish and the Germans, then the Jews and Italians.
The Bronx, with its verdant parks, luxurious apartment buildings and vibrant neighbrhoods offered a safe haven for aspiring immigrants to do good by their children and offer them a better way of life. As these immigrants 'moved on up' to the middle class and further north, the next wave moved on in. As it had always done.
But by the early sixties, existing housing was growing old, plumbing and heating systems needed to be replaced, but the culture of rent control saw landlords not able to afford the renovations.Welfare housing was a temporary boon to the coiffers, but in the end, was the end of the South Bronx.

The destruction starts, and it is as harrowing in the descriptions as it is in the photos. Acres of housing are abandonned by landlords. Heat, hotwater, electricity become things of the past. Junkies rule the streets and begin literaaly tearing buildings apart as they scavange for whatever copper and piping they can find to sell to suport their habits. The landlords realise they can make more money by burning their properties than by selling them. And the South Bronx begins to burn. And Burn. Until it is no more than worthless acres of rubble.
Jonnes chronicles the steady downfall of the Bronx in many compassionate stories, but her hard hitting investigative jouranlistic traits shine through as well. You are left in no doubt that the politicos of the South Bronx definitly were fiddling as the Bronx was burning.
I was there. I grew up in the South Bronx. This book is as real as it gets.
The final chapters deal with the rise of the South Bronx, but one wonders, at what cost? --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Everyone's a Little Bit Racist, August 1, 2007

By 

M. G. Lewis (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City (Paperback)

I'm actually only halfway through South Bronx Rising, but already Jill Jonnes has revealed herself as just a little bit racist. It is clear from reading the book that the Irish and primarily the Jews built the Bronx into a working class oasis. And then the Black and the Puerto Ricans--and we're identified by name! "The Blacks" and "The Puerto Ricans"--ruined it. Poor white immigrants brought hardscrabble working-class *communities* to the Bronx; poor blacks and Puerto Rican immigrants brought *slums.* I bet to the untrained eye they looked exactly the same, except for the complexion of the inhabitants.

It's one thing to identify migratory trends and the social implications of different cultural groups living side by side (indeed, Jonnes does this quite well when discussing the different white folks who inhabit(ed) the Bronx) but to repeatedly throw out comments like 'because of slavery, Blacks lacked the attitudes and outlooks necessary for middle class success' and 'Puerto Rican family structure was categorized by one woman with a houseful of children fathered by a string of common-law husbands,' WITH NO SCHOLARSHIP BEHIND THEM is incredibly irresponsible. I can just see people nodding their heads in agreement--I mean, it's common sense, right? When I go to the shabby parts of the Bronx, all I see is Blacks and Latinos...not so in Riverdale--and I can't help but be offended. There can be no doubt that white flight did a number on the Bronx, but Jonnes would have us believe that it was the *mere absence of white people*, and not the social and political backlash that comes along with white flight everywhere, that was the final nail in the coffin. Whatever. I grew up in the Bronx, I was here when the city and the country turned their backs on us, I was here when the Bronx was Burning, and I promise you we (the Blacks and Puerto Ricans, that is) don't have that kind of power. I am hopeful, though, that later in the book Jonnes will see the error of her ways and STICK TO THE FACTS! (I'm hoping that the "Resurrection" is not credited to white folks coming back to the Bronx, but to the browner among us who stuck it out and are dedicated to its renaissance. I can hope...)

Jonnes' book is certainly comprehensive, but because she shoehorns what are basically her opinions into the story of the Bronx, I have to question the scholarship behind all of it.

1.0 out of 5 stars Missing the Important stuff, March 3, 2011

By 

Casual Reader - See all my reviews

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This review is from: South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City (Paperback)

A chronicle of the rise, fall, and rise again of the Bronx heavily focused on the citizens initiatives to fight housing, drug, etc issues; there must have been a hundred of them in intimate detail, almost to the point of boredom. I did not come away with a strong feeling of what the citizens lives were really like - the intimate details of how they lived and why - and I think that the author made little commentary on the effectiveness of the citizen and political solutions focused on versus other alternatives e.g. job growth rather than available safe housing. EASY READING, POOR AS A LEARNING TOOL