For author and historian Bench Ansfield, returning to Milwaukee to launch their first book was more than just a professional milestone; it was also a homecoming. On Sept. 18, Ansfield read at Boswell Books — the same bookstore they frequented growing up in Fox Point — surrounded by former teachers, friends, and classmates.
“It was quite a throwback,”Ansfield said.
Their book, “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City,” explores how widespread arson in the 1970s and 1980s reshaped the urban landscapes we know today, which formed “out of the embers of these fires.” The book was published Aug. 19, 2025.
Reaching from the Bronx to Milwaukee, the book reveals how landlords set deliberate fires, spurred on by incentives rooted in the fittingly named “FIRE industries” (finance, insurance, and real estate), a dynamic exposing deeper patterns of urban disinvestment and inequality.
“I was first kind of tipped off to this history by a neighbor of mine in Philly when I moved there in 2008,” Ansfield said in an interview with the Chronicle. A remark about the widespread nature of the fires planted a question in the back of Ansfield’s mind — one they wouldn’t begin to pursue until five years later, when “it was no longer tolerable [for Ansfield] to just let it sit there.”
That curiosity turned into a decade-long research project.
“It took me a good ten years to piece together the story and do the archival research and interviews that were necessary to write the book,” they said.
Much of the interconnected dynamics Ansfield uncovered were illuminated through insurance records — a subject they described as “something no one would ever choose to think about any more than they absolutely have to.”
Yet for them, those records became “totally fascinating,” illustrating how something “hiding in plain sight” could prove “so important in shaping our behaviors, our lives, and our landscapes.”
“And yet, because it pretends to be so boring and complex, we don’t give it its due,” Ansfield said.
The book also confronts a painful stereotype: the centuries-old notion of the “Jewish arsonist” or so-called “Jewish lightning,” which can be traced back to the Middle Ages.
“One of the reasons I was pulled into this project was because of this stereotype,” Ansfield said. “And as a Jew, I felt well positioned to navigate the complexities of the topic.”
Their research shows how blame was deliberately misdirected, with narratives painting arsonists as individual actors.
“The book ultimately makes the argument that this kind of stereotypical arsonist, you know, usually was either played by a Jew or a Black man. And that stereotype, in either case, fulfilled a similar function. It distracted from these larger political and economic forces.”
Since publication, survivors of these “burning years” have reached out to Ansfield, sharing how the book validated their lived experiences after decades of victim-blaming discrediting them.
“This was the really cool thing that I suppose I should have expected — and that has just been this surprising delight — that folks who have been through this history are reaching out,” Ansfield said. “And their satisfaction in the record being set straight has been really profound for me.”
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An admired work
“Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City” is a New York Times Editors’ Choice. It is “revelatory …. Deeply researched and masterfully told,” according to Brian Goldstone, “New York Times Book Review.”
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