The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
In Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress – And How to Bring It Back, Marc J. Dunkelman argues that well-intentioned efforts by progressives have contributed to “render[ing] government incompetent.” Once championing a technocratic elite to run government from the top down, the post-Robert Moses mid-century shift, which questioned this elitism and sought to undermine it […]
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For our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, we asked for stories about projects that faced “stumbling blocks.” There were a multitude of them placed in the path of Mabel E. Macomber, a Progressive Era playground advocate, written about by Alexandra Miller in our fifth entry. To see all entries from this year’s contest check out […]
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Our fourth author in the 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, Allie Goodman, describes the experience of a young woman and her family “stumbling through” efforts to obtain assistance provided by a settlement house but subject to conditions, including surveillance and extralegal work agreements. To see all entries from this year’s contest check out our round […]
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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 […]
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Herbin-Triant, Elizabeth A. Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. By Paige Glotzer When such an enormous percentage of urban history grapples with the legacies of housing discrimination in the United States, it can be easy to overlook the efforts to segregate that did not […]
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Benjamin Heber Johnson, Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017) 311 pp. $40, ISBN: 9780300115505 By Alan Lessoff Urban historians should take particular note of Benjamin Heber Johnson’s Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation, which returns the city to the center […]
Read MoreCynthia Heider M.A. Student in Public History, Temple University Digital Projects Assistant, Center for Digital Scholarship at the American Philosophical Society @comebackcities Describe your current public history project(s). What about it/them are you finding interesting, challenging, and rewarding? I suspect that some readers may be confused by or unfamiliar with the term “public history,” so […]
Read MoreAlan Lessoff University Professor of History Illinois State University Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I’m in the middle of two projects. The first is an exhibition and book project undertaken with the McLean County Museum of History, an exemplary regional museum in this part of Illinois. The theme is unbuilt […]
Read MoreIn the process of building a bibliography for New Orleans, fellow scholars repeatedly recommended Emily Landau’s Spectacular Wickedness: Race, Sex, and Memory in Storyville, New Orleans. In Spectacular Wickedness, Landau provides a window in the the Progressive Era politics that dominated the nation during the first two decades using the notorious Storyville neighborhood of New Orleans. Landau was kind enough […]
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The Metropole 