Gods of Gotham

A sweeping saga of New York City circa 1951, featuring numerous real-life historic figures in a dark, swirling story of political corruption, the rise of television, fixed college basketball games, and the ominous beginnings of McCarthyism.

A national championship basketball team, an effective, popular mayor with some dark secrets to hide, the genial mastermind of Brooklyn’s illegal sports betting empire, who feeds and fears a rogue police force — these are the Gods of Gotham, men who have reached the top through daring, hard work, and some very questionable associations.

Set as the 1940s become the 1950s in New York City, this sprawling new novel from Oscar-nominated filmmaker John Sayles follows a wide cast of characters including politicians, criminals, hopeful youth and striving immigrants trying to succeed — or even just survive — in a corrupt and rapidly changing metropolis.

A welcome distraction from it all is the City College basketball team, which has been wildly inconsistent, but suddenly—shockingly—seems like it may be on the way to a national championship.

Featuring numerous real-life historical figures — including New York Mayor William O’Dwyer, Murder Inc. mobster Albert Anastasia, and legendary City College coach Nat Holman — the novel interweaves plot lines involving McCarthy-era repression, Borscht Belt comedians and the rise of television, the Puerto Rican diaspora, the threat of atomic war, and mob violence, to tell the everything-all-at-once story of the self-anointed Greatest City in the World.