This Anisfield-Wolf winner will change how you think about cities
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My book club recently met to discuss Bench Ansfield's "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City."
Why it matters: The revelatory urban history was the 2026 nonfiction winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
Zoom in: The book argues the urban conflagrations that devastated the Bronx and other U.S. cities through the 1970s — including Cleveland — were not primarily the work of residents, but of landlords exploiting insurance incentives.
- Ansfield traces how racialized insurance practices established after the urban uprising of the 1960s ("brownlining") led to real estate speculation and widespread arson-for-profit.
The other side: The book also highlights the tenant organizers who fought back and rebuilt their neighborhoods.
Between the lines: Cleveland experienced an arson wave in the 1970s as well, which I first discovered while reading Dan Kerr's "Derelict Paradise."
- Kerr also has a chapter on Cleveland's fires in the 2012 academic anthology "Flammable Cities," which I plan to check out from CPL as soon as it's available.
- Those interested in the birth of community development corporations, an outgrowth of the tenant response, might also be interested in Randy Cunningham's local history, "Democratizing Cleveland."
What's next: Bench Ansfield will be in Cleveland Sept. 18-19 as part of the two-day Anisfield-Wolf festivities.
- After the ceremony Friday evening, Ansfield will join civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson and Tenant Union Federation director Tara Raghuveer for a Saturday "fireside chat" on arson, insurance fraud, and tenant organizing at Market Garden Brewery.