City by City
Dispatches from the American Metropolis
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A collection of essays—historical and personal—about the present and future of American cities
Edited by Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb, City by City is a collection of essays—historical, personal, and somewhere in between—about the present and future of American cities. It sweeps from Gold Rush, Alaska, to Miami, Florida, encompassing cities large and small, growing and failing. These essays look closely at the forces—gentrification, underemployment, politics, culture, and crime—that shape urban life. They also tell the stories of citizens whose fortunes have risen or fallen with those of the cities they call home.
A cross between Hunter S. Thompson, Studs Terkel, and the Great Depression–era WPA guides to each state in the Union, City by City carries this project of American storytelling up to the days of our own Great Recession.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The spirited, eye-opening examinations of various American cities in this intelligent collection of essays, many republished from n+1 magazine, tell a common story of economic vibrancy and ambitious vision followed by "postindustrial malaise," economic depression, ecological devastation, and rising crime. Some chapters peer revealingly into small pockets of a business or a lifestyle; others analyze structures such as highways, skyscrapers, and schools. The most thoughtful and thought-provoking provide personalized histories of various cities' struggles, illuminating their current economics (a study of denim production in Greensboro, N.C.; another of a brothel in Washington, D.C.), colorful pasts, and attempts at renewal: fracking in Williston, N.D., volunteerism in New Orleans, the DestiNY U.S.A. mall in Syracuse, N.Y., and reality TV in Whittier, Alaska. While the collection paints a depressing picture of the modern American city as home to strangling politics, entrenched racism, and desperate poverty, and subject to ongoing gentrification and exploitation by the very wealthy, several essays sow seeds of hope for a more promising future: one of environmental renewal and new civic institutions that can renegotiate livable, thriving communities out of a present crisis and a blighted past.
