Born in Flames
ON THE BOOK SHELF
By John M. Malecky November, 2025
Born in Flames
The Business of Arson and the remaking of the American City
By Bench Ansfield
Available from:
FSP Books
433 Main Street, Suite 2A
Hudson, MA 01749
1-800-522-8528
e-mail: support@fire-police-ems.com
Price: $31.99
This is a hard cover book measuring six inches by nine inches. It has 254 pages plus an epilogue, notes, acknowledgements, credits, etc., which bring the number of pages to 332 before the index. The book is based on a decade of research by the author and addresses the massive amount of arson fires mostly in The Bronx during the War Years. Most of these fires were thought to have been started by tenants seeking better housing, furniture, etc., whereas this as it turns out was not the case but rather the culprits were the landlords seeking to defraud insurance companies and collect huge sums of money. The book details ways that they went about it .you will learn terms such as “redlining” and “brownlining” as it pertained to insurance companies and how they decided what premiums to charge in certain neighborhoods. You will read about some families who suffered through several building fires where they lived. It is a slow read mostly because of reporting on insurance and landlord operations. Whereas most of the books reviewed in this column have content of action during firefighting, this one has no details of that nature nevertheless it is an eye opening report to explain the true nature of what these fire settings were all about. There are a number of black and white photos to accompany these chapter which help to illustrate the messages.
No information from the author.
