Urban Studies

"In 1925, a Negro doctor, Ossian Sweet, was accosted at his Detroit home by a mob of angry white citizens...Boyle weaves the investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into [a] narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s."

"Unskilled workers once flocked to Detroit, attracted by manufacturing jobs paying union wages, but the passing of Detroit's manufacturing heyday has left many of those workers stranded."

"As David Maraniss captures it with power and affection, Detroit summed up America's path to music and prosperity that was already past history."

"In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty."

"Kneebone and Berube paint a new picture of poverty in America as well as the best ways to combat it. Confronting Suburban Poverty in America offers a series of workable recommendations for public, private, and nonprofit leaders."

Penetrating analysis of the functions and organization of city neighborhoods, the forces of deterioration and regeneration, and the necessary planning innovations.

"A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man's incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York."

"Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities supplies the definitive analysis of the homophile movement in the U.S. from 1940 to 1970."

"This book analyses the expansion of Chicago's Black Belt during the period immediately following World War II."

"Chambers examines how culture and history influenced the incorporation of Somali immigrants in the U.S., and recommends policy changes that can advance rather than impede incorporation."

"In the last third of the nineteenth century Boston grew from a crowded merchant town, in which nearly everybody walked to work, to the modern divided metropolis."

"Zoltan Hajnal demonstrates that under most black mayors there is real, positive change in the white vote and in the racial attitudes of white residents."

"Their groundbreaking study offers valuable insight into whether consolidation meets those promises made to voters to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these governments."

"City Limits radically reinterprets urban politics by deriving its dominant forces from the logic of the American federal structure."

"Regime Politics offers readers a political history of postwar Atlanta and an elegant, innovative, and incisive conceptual framework destined to influence the way urban politics is studied."

"This is a biography of mayor Richard J. Daley. It is the story of his rise from the working-class Irish neighbourhood of his childhood to his role as one of the most important figures in 20th century American politics."

"This study of the emergence of machine politics in New York City during the antebellum years sheds light on the origins of a system that was the characteristic form of government in United States cities from the mid-nineteenth until well into the twentieth century."

"In the Southwest, municipal reformers got everything they wanted: nonpartisanship, city managers, citywide elections, civil service, and a government with few social service responsibilities. Successful at limiting popular participation and at carefully targeting amenities to their core supporters, incumbents in big cities counted on re-election as confidently as could any machine politician."

"1919, The Year of Racial Violence recounts African Americans' brave stand against a cascade of mob attacks in the United States after World War I."

"Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation...."

"A history of northern racial exclusion demonstrates the pervasiveness of racism throughout the entire United States, analyzing how sundown towns in northern states participated in racially oppressive practices and victimized black citizens with frequently violent attacks well into the late twentieth century."

"Addresses the issue of 'boomburbs,' large suburbs of more than 100,000 residents, and examines who lives in them, what drives their development, and how they are governed."

"The book shows not only that Americans have long preferred a detached dwelling to a row house, rural life to city life, and owning to renting, but also that suburbanization has been as much a governmental as a natural process."

"Challenging the image of the migrants as helpless and poor, Gregory shows how both black and white southerners used their new surroundings to become agents of change."

"The New Urban Crisis offers a compelling diagnosis of our economic ills and a bold prescription for more inclusive cities capable of ensuring growth and prosperity for all."

"Florida outlines how certain cities succeed in attracting members of the 'creative class' - the millions of people who work in information-age economic sectors and in industries driven by innovation and talent."

"Foglesong offers a critical account of how Disney has used--and also abused--its governmental immunities from the beginning of Disney World to the present under chairman Michael Eisner."

"A pioneering urban economist offers fascinating, even inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest invention and our best hope for the future."

"Diversity Explosion shares the good news about diversity in the coming decades, and the more globalized, multiracial country that the U.S. is becoming."

"Today, a demographic inversion is taking place: Central cities increasingly are where the affluent want to live, while suburbs are becoming home to poorer people and those who come to America from other parts of the world."

"This collection offers alternative explanations of local actions with a focus on conflict."

"By the end of the twentieth century, decaying inner cities in America continued to lose ground despite the best efforts of local and federal officials. By then the investment in urban revitalization begun during the activist 1960s had become a romantic memory. Roger Biles's insightful new book shows why."

"After describing the development of generally stable and risk-limiting mortgage markets throughout much of the twentieth century, Foreclosed details how federal policy-makers failed to regulate the new high-risk lending markets that arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s."

"Based on a comprehensive national survey and an intensive study of five diverse U.S. cities, the authors provide the first systematic analysis of the politics of gay and lesbian rights at the local level."