Summer in the City

“These first-rate essays provide a positive revaluation of [John Lindsay’s] mayoralty, a convincing defense of the progressive tradition he championed.” —Mike Wallace, Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of Gotham

Summer in the City takes a clear look at John Lindsay’s tenure as mayor of New York City during the tumultuous 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson launched his ambitious Great Society Program. Providing an even-handed reassessment of Lindsay’s legacy and the policies of the period, the essays in this volume skillfully dissect his kaleidoscope of progressive ideas and approach to leadership—all set in a perfect storm of huge demographic changes, growing fiscal stress, and an unprecedented commitment by the federal government to attain a more equal society. Compelling archival photos and a timeline give readers a window into the mythic 1960s, a period animated by civil rights marches, demands for black power, antiwar demonstrations, and a heroic intergovernmental effort to redistribute national resources more evenly.

Written by prize-winning authors and leading scholars, each chapter covers a distinct aspect of Lindsay’s mayoralty (politics, race relations, finance, public management, architecture, economic development, and the arts), while Joseph P. Viteritti’s introductory and concluding essays offer an honest and nuanced portrait of Lindsay and the prospects for shaping more balanced public priorities as New York City ushers in a new era of progressive leadership.

“Summer in the City artfully balances the interplay of leadership, ideas about urbanism that were prevalent at the time, and deep political, intergovernmental, demographic, and economic structural forces at play in the 1960s, producing the best volume about Mayor John Lindsay ever published.” —Richard Flanagan, City University of New York