Rose Pastor Stokes, Advocate “for the People, not the Profiteers”–A Review of “Rebel Cinderella”

January 10, 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

Hochschild, Adam. Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. Reviewed by Sara Paretsky Rebel Cinderella, Adam Hochschild’s study of Rose Pastor Stokes, draws the reader into the early decades of the twentieth century when reformers and radicals sought to shape public policies […]

The Big Fish and a Big Building: A Historic Pittsburgh Building’s Obituary

December 20, 2021.Reading time 36 minutes.

By David S. Rotenstein Introduction In the summer of 2021, crews began demolishing a historic building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Strip District. The building was a monumental, windowless, concrete block onto which a later owner—a fish wholesaler and retailer—had installed a large illuminated fish. The building and its fish were popular and well-loved visual landmarks in […]

Demythologizing Newsboys — A Review of “Crying the News”

June 7, 2021.Reading time 13 minutes.

DiGirolamo, Vincent. Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Reviewed by Cristina Groeger In Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys, Vincent DiGirolamo gives newsboys the historical weight they are due. At nearly 600 pages, this tome offers a comprehensive history of a youth occupation spanning two […]

The Archaeology of Miami’s Labor History

March 11, 2021.Reading time 27 minutes.

By Thomas Castillo Migration, wealth, racism, ethnic diversity, and tourism are the likely quick associations one would make about Miami’s history. Miami, of course, is a city proper, but it also is the label that includes the entire urban region of Miami-Dade County. I, for example, no longer try to distinguish my hometown, Hialeah, adjacent […]

The Hague Case: A Different View of Police Misbehavior in Pre-World War II America

January 28, 2021.Reading time 18 minutes.

By Donald W. Rogers, PhD During the winter and spring of 1937-1938, police officers clashed with members and supporters of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) in streets and parks of Jersey City, New Jersey, manhandling demonstrators, punching a few, and bodily expelling others from city limits. Those notorious instances of police coercion contributed to the […]

Beyond the Urban Undead: A Bibliography of the Motor City

January 7, 2020.Reading time 66 minutes.

[Editor’s note: In anticipation of UHA 2020 to be held in Detroit, October 8-11, 2020, The Metropole is featuring Detroit as our Metro of the Month for January. See here for the CFP and here for info about and link to the UHA spreadsheet. The latter is meant to help urbanists find prospective panels and […]

Member of the Week: Monica Perales

November 28, 2017.Reading time 6 minutes.

Monica Perales Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public History University of Houston @mperaleshtx Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My current research blends my interests in Mexican American, labor, and food history. I’m working on a book project that explores Mexican women’s food labor in Texas — this […]

Adding Fuel to the Right Fires

April 26, 2017.Reading time 14 minutes.

Today we are initiating our Scholar-Activist of the Month series. Nick Juravich, defended his dissertation in U.S. History at Columbia University on Monday, and in September he will be an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society. Nick offers this reflection on the relationship between scholarship […]