The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
Kelly Lytle Hernández. City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. We are living in an era of human caging on a massive scale. Each night, 2.2 million people fall asleep locked inside one of more than 6,000 prisons, jails, […]
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If you are an urban scholar who put a book, article, or dissertation out into the world in 2018, we encourage you to check out the Jackson, Hirsch, Katz, and unnamed “best non-North American book” awards and consider applying. The selection criteria for all awards is the samee: significance, originality, quality of research, sophistication of […]
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Strausbaugh, John. Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers during World War II. (New York: Twelve, 2018). 497pp. $30. ISBN 1455567485 Reviewed by Michael L. Levine Victory City tells what it was like to live in New York during the Great Depression and World War II. The book may not break new […]
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By Susan A.C. Rosenfeld During the second half of the nineteenth century, Lagos became an increasingly diverse, urban node on the Atlantic circuit, where slavery and freedom defined individual identities and shaped the city itself. A series of political and economic transformations contributed to the social dynamics of Lagos. The nineteenth-century transition from the trans-Atlantic […]
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Mark Wild. 2019. Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City After World War II. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 336 pp. $50. ISBN: 978-0226605234. Hardcover. In some ways, the idea for this book began during my childhood in 1970s-era San Francisco. The city in those years was much more dynamic, much more interesting, and […]
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By Robert B. Carey, Ph.D. Germ City: Microbes and the Metropolis. Museum of the City of New York until April 28th https://www.mcny.org/exhibition/germ-city Review of Germ City and Related Podcasts Radio Station WYNC https://www.wnyc.org/story/germ-city/ We live in a time of New York Triumphalism—it is hard to avoid the celebratory tone and the accompanying music that rehearses […]
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By Lisa A. Lindsay A decade before the American Civil War, James Churchwill (“Church”) Vaughan set out to fulfill his formerly enslaved father’s dying wish: that he should leave his home in South Carolina for a new life in Africa. With help from the American Colonization Society, he went first to Liberia, though he did […]
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As historians gather their kits together to embark on the quest that is #OAH19, The Metropole would like to provide some Philadelphia-centric reading material to those travelling the highways and byways of America to reach the City of Brotherly Love. We offer, first, a round up of our March coverage of the Philly for our […]
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Editor’s note: In anticipation of this week’s #OAH2019/#OAH19 in Philadelphia, the March Metro of the Month was the City of Brotherly love (you can see here for all of our offerings; it begins with the post below but if you scroll down you’ll find all the others). We offer a final new post to whet […]
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In its section on Nigeria, Lonely Planet’s 1995 edition of its Rough Guide to West Africa advised that getting the most out of one’s visit to the country depended on avoiding “Lagos and the sprawling congested cities of Ibadan, Port Hartcourt, Enugu, and Onitsha.” Several years later, a 30th anniversary edition offered a more nuanced […]
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The Metropole 