Sugrue is an American scholar specializing in 20th-century American urbanism, political history, and race relations. He received his doctorate in American history from Harvard University in 1992. As of 2022, he is Julius Silver Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at New York University as well as Director of the NYU Cities Collaborative, an initiative that convenes scholars from around the world to discuss pressing urban issues. Before his appointment at NYU, Sugrue held an endowed faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded the Penn Social Science and Policy Forum. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Institute for the Humanities, and the Royal Historical Society (“Thomas J. Sugrue,” New York University, 2022).

Originally published in 1996, The Origins of the Urban Crisis is Sugrue’s first book and among his most acclaimed. The book received the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History (1998), the Urban History Association Prize for Best Book in North American Labor History (1997), the Social Science History Association President’s Book Award for emerging scholars (1996), and the Philip Taft Labor History Award (1996).