New York Comes Back
The Mayoralty of Edward I. Koch

Edited by Michael Goodwin
Texts by Pete Hamill, Al Sharpton, Ken Auletta, Alair Townsend, Jim Brigham, Joyce Purnick, Judith Kaye, Carl Weisbrod, Joe Rose, Evan Cornog, Ronay Menschel, Sam Roberts, Mike Gecan, Johnny Ray Youngblood, Henry Stern, and John Mollenkopf
In association with the Museum of the City of New York

New York City had been bleeding red ink, good jobs, and its middle class for years when Edward I. Koch was first elected in a stunning upset in 1977. With archival photographs and insightful essays, New York Comes Back tells how Mayor Koch led America’s largest city away from the brink of bankruptcy and social decay. After the Son of Sam murder spree and
the riots that followed a sweltering July blackout, an unlikely savior stepped into the void and chaos. An unknown congressman with a rubber face and a liberal bent, Ed Koch injected a new word into the political vocabulary: No. Government would have to do less and people would have to sacrifice more if New York was to survive. Dr. No’s enthusiastic jousting with the city’s enemies, real and sometimes imagined, gave an instant lift to New York’s collective spirit. Before long, people and money were flowing into the city instead of out, and New York became a model for how to revive America’s troubled urban areas.

The love affair between the city and its outspoken mayor had decided hiccups, but Koch ruled Gotham like no mayor since LaGuardia for twelve dramatic years. He put in place policies that spurred development, and left behind a more stable and vibrant place to live, work, and visit. New York Comes Back depicts the journey that Koch took New York on through a series of pointed essays by a celebrated list of journalists, authors, policy experts, and former associates— all of whom had front-row seats or were actual participants in those dynamic years of change and rebirth. The text is richly illustrated with more than one hundred photographs taken from the archives of the New York Daily News. Adding to the essays, the paper’s celebrated photographers roamed the city, capturing New York and its mayor in ways that bring home the grit and the glory of those exciting and important times.

Exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, October 2005–March 2006

Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the Daily News and the coauthor of I, Koch: A Decidedly Unauthorized Biography of the Mayor of New York City, Edward I. Koch (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1985). A 1972 graduate of Columbia University, Goodwin was the New York Times City Hall bureau chief for four years while Koch was mayor. From that perch, and through all the years since, he has watched Koch become one of the most visible and important politicians in the city’s long history. Goodwin lives in New York with his wife, Jennifer Raab, and their children, Scott and Miranda.