Book Talk: Paradise Bronx

EventIn Person

In Partnership with Housing Works

On Wednesday, January 22 from 6-8 PM, kick-off your 2025 with the next installment of the Municipal Art Society + Housing Works author series! Writer Ian Frazier will discuss his new book, Paradise Bronx, with Boris Kachka, senior editor at The Atlantic. The pair will discuss Paradise Bronx and Frazier’s process as a writer. This is not an event to miss!

Paradise Bronx is “a love song to New York City’s most heterogeneous and alive borough” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Join us on January 22 to pick up a copy of the book and get it signed by Ian Frazier!

Light refreshments and snacks will be available for purchase. Doors at 6 PM. Event at 6:15 PM. Email events@mas.org with any questions.

The event is SOLD OUT but walk-ins are welcome at Housing Works Bookstore.

About the Book

For the past fifteen years, Ian Frazier has been walking the Bronx. Paradise Bronx reveals the amazingly rich and tumultuous history of this amazingly various piece of our greatest city. From Jonas Bronck, who bought land from the local Native Americans, to the formerly gang-wracked South Bronx that gave birth to hip-hop, Frazier’s loving exploration is a moving tour de force about the polyglot culture that is America today.

During the Revolution, when the Bronx was unclaimed territory known as the Neutral Ground, some of the war’s decisive battles were fought here by George Washington’s troops. Gouverneur Morris, one of the most colorful Founding Fathers, owned a huge swath of the Bronx, where he lived when he was not in Paris during the French Revolution or helping write the US Constitution.

Frazier shows us how the coming of the railroads and the subways drove the settling of the Bronx by various waves of immigration— Irish, Italian, Jewish (think the Grand Concourse), African American, Caribbean, Puerto Rican (J.Lo is one of the borough’s most famous citizens). The romance of the Yankees, the disaster of the Cross Bronx Expressway, the invention of rap and hip-hop, the resurgence of community as the borough’s communities learn mutual aid—all are investigated, recounted, and celebrated in Frazier’s inimitable voice.

This is a book like no other about a quintessential American city and the resilience and beauty of its citizens. Learn more about the book >

Wednesday, January 22
6:00 PM — 8:00 PM

Housing Works Bookstore
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012

Tickets:
Free!

Attend
  • Praise for "Paradise Bronx" by Ian Frazier Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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  • Ian Frazier (Featured Writer) and Boris Kachka.
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Meet the Speakers

Ian Frazier, Featured Writer
Ian Frazier is the author of Travels in Siberia, Great Plains, On the Rez, Lamentations of the Father and Coyote V. Acme, among other works, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He graduated from Harvard University. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey. His most recent book is Paradise Bronx.

Boris Kachka, Moderator
Boris Kachka is a senior editor at The Atlantic, the former books editor of the Los Angeles Times, and a former longtime editor and writer at New York magazine. He is also the author of “Hothouse,” a cultural history of the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux; “Becoming a Veterinarian”; and “Becoming a Producer.”