The disastrous story of how a computer program burned down America's greatest city-and forever changed the way the modern city works. This is perhaps the most important contemporary history book ever written about FDNY, full of insightful lessons to be learned for any municipal fire department of any size in any country.

The RAND Corporation had an alluring proposal for a city on the brink of economic collapse: using their computer models - which had been developed for, and successfully implemented in, military operations - New York City could save millions of dollars by streamlining public services. The RAND boys were the best and brightest, and bore all the sheen of post­war American success. Meanwhile, New York City seemed old-fashioned, insular, and corrupt - and the new mayor was eager for outside help, especially something as innovative and infallible as "computer modeling." A deal was struck: RAND would begin their first civilian effort with the FDNY.

Throughout the 1970s, a series of fires swept through the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Brooklyn, displacing more than six hundred thousand people and killing over twenty-five hundred citizens and hundreds of firefighters. Conventional wisdom would blame arson, but fire investigators found no uptick in the number of "suspicious" fires. This was the result of something altogether different: the intentional withdrawal of fire protection from the city's poorest neighborhoods - all based on RAND's computer-modeling techniques.

The Fires tells the story of how the good intentions of an ambitious, working-class fire chief, a charismatic mayor and his wonkish successor, and the RAND Corporation went so disastrously wrong - and reveals how RAND's formulas were inextricably woven into the fabric of the late twentieth- and twenty-first ­century city. RAND sold their computer models to cities across the country, and the very same system is still used by the FDNY to allocate resources.

At a time when our country faces an economic climate not seen since the 1970s, and looks for new solutions, new heroes, and new cityscapes, The Fires could not be a more salient book. The strongest lesson is that the short-term cost-cutting measures (shutting stations, decommissioning companies), actually cost more long-term: in delivery of social services, lost business revenue, lost property tax revenue and countless other real costs to the city's budget.

Paperback on sale at 1/3 off! This ties for first place with Bill Patrick's book "Saving Troy" as my personal favorite of all the memoir-style books I carry. Perry is an amazing story teller and a literate writer in the same league as James Agee. Perry is a volunteer firefighter/EMT in New Auburn, Wisconsin, population: 485. Through the stories in the book we get to know his neighbors, we know the lay of the land, we know the history that brought the town and the people together, we know what keeps some there while others leave, and we know the kindness and quirks that make for success in a small town. Weaving all of this together are the call log of 100+ calls a year and the firehouse map grid which he sees as a "dense, benevolent web, spun one frantic zigzag at a time." Perry's storytelling is funny, it's touching, it's real-life rural firefighting and EMS calls. Part Prairie Home Companion, part Emergency, part Yankee Magazine, part Esquire Magazine, and all Michael Perry and his neighbors and fellow first responders.

Buckle in - this is one amazing book! There is almost nothing that turns my crank faster than great writing, and I gotta tell you that I've been turning at warp speed since the second page of this book. Bill Patrick had a golden opportunity to spend a year embedded with firefighters and paramedics in Troy, New York, at their busiest station in the mid-1990s. He was and is an outsider and it took him almost 10 years to digest what he saw and felt and put together this amazing read. With his eye for detail and his poet's ability to use just the right words to describe a scene or a feeling, I truly felt as if I were along on each of these calls, some of them heartbreaking, some of them rewarding, all of them approached with professionalism and a desire to do a good job. I put Bill Patrick's book right up on the high pedestal with Dennis Smith's books and Michael Perry's book for giving readers the "see it, smell it, feel it, be there" experience. Troy's a tough town, still today, and these are tough firefighters, some of whom embraced EMS duties, and some of whom resisted them, but none of whom didn't go to work every day willing to do more than they were paid to do, in spite of low pay, public apathy, and the obligatory chief officer from hell. These calls and these firefighters could be in any city. Read this and ride along.

San Francisco and its fire department are besieged by the worst wave of arson to hit an American city since a group of whack jobs tried to burn down Boston back in 1982-83. And, of course, the mayor has decided that it's the perfect time to save money by closing some fire companies and laying off firefighters! The arsonists don't seem to be motivated by revenge or money, it's almost as if they find a building and say, "Now wouldn't that make an interesting job!" Woven in this really good story is the complex world of the professional urban firefighter: courage, dedication, humor, camaraderie -- all so integral to the fabric of fire service life -- as they get closer and closer to catching the increasingly destructive and deadly arsonists. The arsonists are revealed early in the story (based on a real case in a city in New England), and as their plan unfolds, we get inside their sick minds and twisted realities. Well-crafted storytelling. The biggest crime of all is that George Hall died so young (4/2006) and won't be able to give us any more great novels.

Uses conceptual portraits of fire hydrants to document the urban and rural American landscape. Includes at least one photo from each of the 50 states. Although the hydrants are interesting in and of themselves -- given their regional differences in shape, size, and color -- each photo also creatively mirrors the individual character of the location where it was taken. For instance, in Detroit, the hydrant is reflected in the hubcap of a Buick; in Seattle, the hydrant is shot through the front window of a coffee shop; and Brooklyn, New York's hydrant is at the foot of the Coney Island Roller Coaster.