A rollicking, real-life Bonfire of the Vanities account of New York in the late 1980s, this is a tale of outsized, unforgettable characters: Ed Koch, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Rudy Giuliani and Ivan Boesky among them. It’s also a chronicle of the iconic stories that grabbed the headlines: from the Preppy Murder to Black Monday to the trial of Mafia bosses. And it’s a superbly nuanced account of the crises that threatened to tear the city apart: the Tompkins Square Riots, the crack cocaine epidemic, the AIDS outbreak.