by Karen and Erica

We are all living in a remarkable time. A scarcely controlled global pandemic. A vibrant Black Lives Matter movement. A huge, deliberate financial collapse. A precarious political state. A coming to terms with climate. And more.

Feels like vast changes in the way we live are under way. Like the 1970s, right? We didn’t really understand the broader implications of what was happening then. Do we now?

We are reading two riveting books that detail events of fifty years ago. We were on the scene for some of them. These books show us the big picture.

In the 1970s, we were dazzled by New York City, even though it was a train wreck. Crime was rising. Cleanliness was not. Bankruptcy loomed. The city seemed to be in free fall.

But things were happening that would propel the city forward. Big ideas were in the air—one of the biggest being the Twin Towers, completed in 1973. Many people hated them. We loved them. They played no small part in our early years in New York, if only by their presence. And they played no small part in events of the day that resonate still.

One of those events was a violent class conflict on the streets of Lower Manhattan in 1970. That year, students, including us, were protesting the Vietnam War. We were sure we were right, and sure we held the moral high ground. We knew less about the other side. The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City and the Dawn of the White Working Class Revolution sets out both sides, in gripping detail.

In 1970, for the first time the burden of fighting a war was not equitably distributed among the male citizens of this country. Moneyed and educated elites were able to avoid conscription, at least while they were in college. Sons of the working class enlisted, or were conscripted, to serve their country. Those who served, or whose sons were serving, did not find the protests, or the hippies, or the college students, amusing. They were angered when those elites treated the American flag in a manner they felt was disrespectful. They felt disrespected too.

Among those unamused citizens were construction workers. Days after the Kent State massacre, mobs of them, including those building the Twin Towers, swarmed Lower Manhattan. They came to attack protestors, viciously beating them and anyone else in their path. Police response was tepid. (Ten years later, one of us was close with a man who was on that day a newly minted, newly suited, lawyer. He gestured at the construction workers. He lost his front teeth and nearly his life.)

Then-President Nixon and his team saw an opportunity to turn the white working class away from the Democratic Party. That’s what they did, using techniques honed to perfection today. The Democrats never caught up. The class conflict that played out on the streets that day continues to play a huge role in politics today.

Other influences were also abroad in the city in the 1970s. The Most Spectacular Restaurant In The World: The Twin Towers, Windows On The World, and the Rebirth of New York is set in the same time and place as the class conflict represented by the Hardhat Riot, but paints a picture of a very different set of confluences and events—though the Twin Towers again play an outsize role.

The book is about Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, built by those same construction workers who took down the protestors. Windows opened in 1976, as we were starting our legal careers. Over the years, we went to the bar—Cellar In The Sky—to celebrate special occasions. And we took classes with the wonderful Kevin Zraly, who taught us everything we knew about wine. Occasionally, we even had a meal in the dining room. The Towers, and Windows, were part of our lives.

The building of the Twin Towers dramatically changed the face of real estate in Manhattan. Even we could see that. But we did not realize that the Towers, and Windows, had a profound effect upon the fortunes of the city. Or that the menus at Windows changed how people thought of food, as its ambience changed how they thought about dining. Since we knew nothing about wine before we went to school, we did not understand that Zraly’s approach was revolutionary, and American. We just knew Windows was an exhilarating place to be.

The Windows story ended when the Towers fell, and the restaurant, and everyone in it, died. Our world changed instantly. We are still trying to understand the scope of that change.

We love books that pull together facts we thought we knew, and facts we know we did not, to put into perspective a time we actually lived through.

What books do the same for you?