A Plague on Your Houses How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled

by Wallace, Deborah; Wallace, Rodrick

• ISBN13: 9781859842539
• ISBN10: 1859842534
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

A Plague on Your Houses is a scorching indictment of the decision to close fire companies in New York City in the 1970s and a frightening study of the way misguided and malevolent social policy can spark a chain reaction of enormous and unforeseen urban collapse. Using an approach more commonly associated with epidemiology, Deborah and Rodrick Wallace paint a terrifying picture of rampant social collapse spreading in the patterns of a pandemic plague.

Author Biography

Deborah Wallace is the author of In the Mouth of the Dragon: Toxic Fires in the Age of Plastics and, with Rodrick Wallace, Studies on the Collapse of the Fire Service in New York City. She works as an ecologist for Consumers’ union.

Rodrick Wallace is a research scientist in the Department of Mental Health Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric institute.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Preface	xi
Introduction	xv
PART ONE
Introduction to Part One: Baptism by Fire	3	(6)
Setting the Scene	9	(12)
Benign Neglect and Planned Shrinkage	21	(26)
A Plague on Houses: Contagious Fires	47	(36)
PART TWO
Introduction to Part Two: Epidemics	81	(2)
Tuberculosis: The Captain of All the Men of Death	83	(26)
Substance Abuse	109	(14)
AIDS: Incurable and Fatal	123	(14)
Epidemics Galore	137	(22)
PART THREE
Introduction to Part Three: Beyond New York City and Policy	157	(2)
Metropolitan Region and Nation	159	(26)
Policy to Heal the Wounds	185	(10)
The 1990s: Fighting the Symptoms	195	(12)
Notes	207	(10)
Index	217