Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York (Oxford University Press, 2022) tells how New York emerged from the devastation that consumed nearly 700 buildings. The history focuses on the forces that shaped the city’s destiny, from fire and water, to land, culture, politics and disease. Within its pages Daniel S. Levy interweaves the lives of a vast array of New Yorkers who took part in this miraculous transformation. Some are well known like the land baron John Jacob Astor, the landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted and the politician William “Boss” Tweed. Others are less known, as with the Bowery Theatre impresario Thomas Hamblin, the African-American restaurateur Thomas Downing and the architect Alexander Jackson Davis. Levy’s book offers the story of how the city rose from the ashes, and in the quarter century leading up to and through the Civil War transformed itself into one of the world’s greatest metropolises.