The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth post in our theme for February 2025, “Celluloid City,” which explores the role of and interplay between cities and film. You can see all posts from the theme here By Alyssa Lopez In March 1935, when sixteen-year-old Lino Rivera pocketed a knife while cutting through the S.H. Kress dime […]
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Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in our theme for November, The Latinx City. By Stephanie Rivera-Kumar Philadelphia, one of the oldest cities in the United States, has a vibrant history shaped by immigrant contributions that continue to affect its neighborhoods and economy. In recent years, Latinx immigrants from countries such as the Dominican […]
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David J. Goodwin. Midnight Rambles: H. P. Lovecraft in Gotham. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023. Reviewed by Peter C. Baldwin The horror fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, which sends delightful chills down the spines of his many fans, draws its power from its monsters and creepy settings, not from human characters. Lovecraft’s florid prose […]
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Another year is coming to a close, and here at The Metropole, we editors are once again sharing some recommendations for things to read, listen to, view, or experience in your “off” time in the coming year. First up: the books and podcasts that made us think and feel (and a bonus music recommendation). Books […]
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Is there anything better than slinging out “Best Of” lists? How often do we have a platform from which to proselytize for one’s favorite films, books, movies and so forth? At The Metropole, we asked our editors if they wanted take the opportunity to hype those things that got them through this very difficult year. […]
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On behalf of the Urban History Association’s board of directors, we’re delighted to announce the winners of this year’s UHA award competitions. Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book (North American), 2019 Co-Winner: Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean (Princeton University Press, 2019). New York was not […]
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By Avigail Oren In This Tender Land (2019), William Kent Kreuger’s loose update of Huck Finn, the O’Banion brothers and their compatriots Emmy and Mose end up in St. Paul, Minnesota, after escaping from the Lincoln Indian Training School—and its despicable, abusive, headmaster Mrs. Brinkman—and sailing down the Minnesota River in a canoe. After passing […]
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For now, Cityscape is The Metropole’s listing of recent, forthcoming, or overlooked writing. When movie theaters and museums re-open, we will again link to films and exhibits of interest to urban historians. Recent Books To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America By Felicia Angeja Viator, Harvard University Press, 2020 An inquiry […]
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Cityscape is The Metropole’s monthly shortcut to recent, forthcoming, or overlooked writing, exhibits and film. Recent Books Newsboys, Crying the News: A History of America’s Boys By Vincent DiGirolamo, Oxford University Press, 2019 Reverberating through city streets and especially in the movies—“Extra, Extra Read all about it!”—DiGorolamo brings to life a world where kids […]
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Cityscape is The Metropole’s monthly shortcut to recent, forthcoming, or overlooked writing, exhibits and film. Recent Books Rotten Bodies: Class and Contagion in Eighteenth-Century Britain By Kevin Siena, Yale University Press, 2019 After the plague of 1666, it was the poor, allegedly weak and easily contaminated who were blamed for the epidemics that followed. […]
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