“Doesn’t every New Yorker really want to own a co-op?,” a realtor asked a crowd of tenants in 1972. But this provoked only “a chorus of noes.”

Benjamin Holtzman
Benjamin Holtzman is an Assistant Professor of History at Lehman College/CUNY. He is the author of The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism. His research and teaching focus on the political and social history of the United States, with particular emphasis on cities, race and class, capitalism, and social movements. Holtzman is currently working on his second book, “Smash the Klan”: Fighting the White Power Movement in the Late Twentieth Century.
Whose Brooklyn?
In 1939, the editors of Fortune planned a special issue of the magazine on New York City. They tasked James Agee—who had recently filed another Fortune assignment, which would culminate in the ...