Which Truly Gets the '70s: City on Fire or "We Didn't Start the Fire"? Tom Scocca · 10/06/15 01:35PM Michiko Kakutani, tireless New York Times book critic, has high praise today for City on Fire, the debut novel by Garth Risk Hallberg. It is, Kakutani writes, “an amazing virtual reality machine, whisking us back to New York City in the 1970s”: