‘Even his enemies admired his chutzpah’: How Trump became a God of New York in the 1980s

In his new book, Jonathan Mahler vividly evokes the New York of four decades ago – the racial divide, the Aids epidemic and the audacious materialism

Donald Trump in 1987 above New York City, flying aboard his Puma helicopter. Photo: Joe McNally via Getty

The back cover of this history of New York calls it “a real-life Bonfire of the Vanities ”. Tom Wolfe’s bestselling 1987 novel about a bond trader who comes a cropper in a very serious way is also referred to within the text, but the extended dramatis personae and the scope of events covered here would have even the author famed for his white suit throwing his hands up in defeat. It’s closer to the Thackeray that inspired Wolfe or even the richly

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