Image of book cover

Photo of author on a rooftop holding livestream video via cell phone

Text from LA Times article: award in the history category for "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and theRemaking of the American City," which exposes a pattern of landlords setting residential fires to collect insurance payouts, they said, "It's a scary time to be a historian in the United States." "Our field, like so many other fields, is under attack," Ansfield said. "To understand the crises in front of us, we have to understand our history."

What a week🫨 Last night in Philly I got to watch the livestream of the @latimesfob awards, where Born in Flames won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. It was announced Oscars-style—really gets the heart racing. I was grateful to be with dear friends who know how to shriek.

Image shows 5 nominees for the LA Times Book Prize in History, including OP's book Born in Flames.

Good news in ghastly times

I don’t feel like enough people are aware that the School District of Philadelphia is planning to close 20 schools and relocate 8 additional schools. If this plan is approved, about 5,000 students would see their schools closed and another 2,800 would have their school location moved.

Rewatching Andor is always the right choice

The Anti-State State w/ Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore (01/26/26) | The Death Panel Get more from The Death Panel on Patreon

In our latest, we speak with Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore about the rapid escalation of police forces and carceral logics on US streets and why abolition is the only way

www.patreon.com/posts/149118...

Immigrant families protest at Texas facility housing 5-year-old boy, father detained in Minnesota Dozens of immigrant families protested behind the fences of a Texas detention facility where a 5-year-old boy Ecuadorian boy and his father were sent this week after being detained in Minnesota.

“That children and their parents would risk retribution under these conditions to speak up is a testament both to how courageous they are and how abysmal the conditions of this place is,” he said.

What are the most hopeful stories you know about US history? The ones that make you feel like another world is possible. Teaching 10th graders the truth about this country’s past + present is heavy, and I need to give my students (and myself) more reasons to stay hopeful.

Four whole group sessions + a three one-on-one meetings with a writing partner from the group.

$250 stipends.

Applications due next Wednesday, 1/21.

Reach out with questions! ;)

What's Going On: The State of Our Schools, Our Students, and Our Selves I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On album on repeat lately—not just because it’s the best album ever made, but also because the question of what’s going on has been ever on my mind, e...

Excited to offer this teachers writing workshop for educators to come together (virtually) to reflect, learn, and write about what’s going on—and to work toward producing a piece for publication. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

FIREstorm — History & Political Economy Project Bench Ansfield in conversation with Andrew Anastasi

"[P]ublic housing was the only type of housing spared by the inferno… What would it mean to take that finding seriously?" @benchansfield.bsky.social on implications of the 1970s arson wave for the housing justice movement today: www.hpeproject.org/blog/firestorm

Screenshot of NYT citation of Born in Flames: "This elegant book dismantles conventional wisdom regarding the fires that ravaged the Bronx and other communities of color in the 1970s. Ansfield shows that most of these fires, which have always been blamed on tenants, were in fact set by landlords; racist housing and insurance practices made it more profitable to burn buildings than to rent them."

In disbelief. The NYT named Born in Flames one of 100 Notable Books of 2025

BORN IN FLAMES by Bench Ansfield @benchansfield.bsky.social

U.S. District Judge April Perry says it comes down to a "credibility determination."

"I simply cannot credit [the Trump administration's] declarations to the extent they contradict state and local law enforcement. … DHS' perception of events are simply unreliable."

Two posters for the Born in Flames launch. OCTOBER 16 // 7pm // $7-15 Maysles Documentary Center Screening of Decade of Fire + Book Panel with organizer and writer Shellyne Rodriguez, director Vivian Vázquez, and Elliot Liu of Take Back the Bronx OCTOBER 18 // 2:30pm // $15-20 Museum of the City of New York In Conversation with Ritti Singh (Housing Justice for All and NYS Tenant Bloc) and curator of social activism Sarah Seidman

NYC come thru!! I'll be doing two BORN IN FLAMES launch events next week 10/16 and 10/18. Plz spread the word!

(links to follow)

The Disasters ‘High-Risk’ Insurance Fails to Paper Over | Essay From the Watts Riots to 2025 Wildfires, California’s FAIR Plan Has Stood in the Way of Transformative Change

By leaning on insurance-based solutions to deep-seated societal problems, California has put itself on a path toward repeating the mistakes of the past, warns Temple University historian @benchansfield.bsky.social. zps.la/4nuhIdv

Screenshot of the SF Chronicle with the headline "How the Watts Uprising in LA led to the state's FAIR insurance plan"

After the Palisades & Eaton fires, insurers leaned on a program designed to respond to the '60s uprisings. The climate crisis is being hedged with the same faulty tools created for the urban crisis. I wrote about that inheritance for @zocalopublicsquare.bsky.social and @sfchronicle.com

A man was just chased and arrested outside of the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago. When legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild asked why, an agent threatened to arrest them too.

Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators” New order targets “anti-Christian,” “anti-American,” and “anti-capitalism” opinions

🚨 New directive NSPM-7 targets "anti-capitalism," “anti-Christian,” and “anti-American" opinions as indicators of extremist violence, authorizing an army of 4,000 counter-terrorism officers to prevent crimes that haven't happened:
www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nsp...

Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7 MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE                THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

Trump just signed an illegal executive order designed to target his political opposition by designating them terrorists and using the DOJ, IRS, FBI, and the JTTF to investigate and charge liberal organizations, funders, members, and protesters.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

I don’t just read the Torah, I am the Torah

Screenshot of Tracy Rosenthal's review in The New Republic of Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.

How can the housing struggles of the 1970s guide the tenant movement in the present? @city.bsky.social breaks it down in this electrifying review of BORN IN FLAMES for @newrepublic.com

If you want to better understand why cities chose police funding over habitability, read this.

Opinion | This Is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know It Well.

“But what makes this parallel feel most apt is how nervous I am about drawing it.” - M. Gessen www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/o...

what ezra doesn't seem willing to accept is that charlie kirk was part of a political movement that does not think that "we are going to have to live here with each other" and is fact very interested in the elimination and/or subjugation of many, many people

DOJ Quietly Deletes Study on Politics of Domestic Terrorists The Justice Department has taken down a study that proves Republicans’ entire narrative wrong about left-wing violence.

From the 2024 study that was just removed from DOJ’s website: “Militant, nationalistic, violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”
newrepublic.com/post/200537/...

"I just want to say, go birds, fuck ICE and free Palestine," "Hacks" star Hannah Einbinder at the #Emmys

A copy of today’s Sunday Times Book Review featuring Brian Goldstone’s review of BORN IN FLAMES. Alongside it is a copy of the book.

A beautiful black and brown dog looks at the newspaper featuring the BORN IN FLAMES review.

Photo captured just before Sal drooled all over the book review of Born in Flames in the Sunday NYT

America is now a place where a prominent cable news host can openly call for homeless people to be murdered — and face zero consequences.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article detailed how an internal law enforcement bulletin said that ammunition recovered following the Charlie Kirk shooting was engraved with expressions of "transgender and anti-fascist ideology." Justice Department officials later urged caution about the bulletin by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, saying it may not accurately reflect the messages on the ammunition, and the article was updated Thursday to reflect that. This editor's note was appended on Friday, Sept. 12, after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said the engravings included one that said "Hey fascist!" along with other messages and symbols. He gave no indication that the ammunition included any transgender references.

hi, cis folks!

the WSJ endangered trans lives with false reporting yesterday. it’s still accepted as truth by many, regardless of it being false. the article’s still up with a little note. it needs full retraction.

it's not even a phone call—it's email. you can do this.

contact info below.🧵⬇️

A script for making these calls: 5calls.org/issue/gender...