Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series)

The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series)

by Jane Jacobs

A classic since its publication in 1961, this book is the defintive statement on American cities: what makes them safe, how they function, and why all too many official attempts at saving them have failed.

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

by Randy Shilts

By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves weaves the... (more)

The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

by Lewis Mumford

The city’s development from ancient times to the modern age. Winner of the National Book Award. “One of the major works of scholarship of the twentieth century” (Christian Science Monitor). Index; illustrations.

Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, The

Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, The

by Jonathan Kozol

The children in this book defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. The book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these... (more)

Twenty Years at Hull-House

by Jane Addams

The true story of one of America's greatest philanthropists This is Jane Addams's graphic account of her famed settlement house in Chicago's West Side slums. Covering the years 1889 to 1909, a time when America was fired with fear of subversives and suspicion of foreigners, this book stands as the immortal testament of a woman who lived and worked among the immigrant settlers, the sweatshop toilers, the unwed... (more)

Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945 (Gender and American Culture)

Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945 (Gender and American Culture)

by Elizabeth Alice Clement

The intense urbanization and industrialization of America's largest city from the turn of the twentieth century to World War II was accompanied by profound shifts in sexual morality, sexual practices, and gender roles. Comparing prostitution and courtship with a new working-class practice of heterosexual barter called "treating," Elizabeth Clement examines changes in sexual morality and sexual and economic... (more)

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (Vintage)

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (Vintage)

by Katherine S. Newman

"Powerful and poignant.... Newman's message is clear and timely." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer In No Shame in My Game , Harvard anthropologist Katherine Newman gives voice to a population for whom work, family, and self-esteem are top priorities despite all the factors that make earning a living next to impossible--minimum wage, lack of child care and health care, and a desperate shortage of even... (more)

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)

by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein

"Brilliant....Here's how to design or redesign any space you're living or working in--from metropolis to room. Consider what you want to happen in the space, and then page through this book. Its radically conservative observations will spark, enhance, organize your best ideas, and a wondrous home, workplace, town will result"--San Francisco Chronicle. A handbook designed for the layman which aims to present a... (more)

Here is New York

by E. B. White

Chosen by The New York Times as one of the ten best books ever written about the city. In the summer of 1949, E.B. White sat in a New York City hotel room and, sweltering in the summer heat, wrote a remarkable, pristine essay, Here Is New York . Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, the author’s stroll around Manhattan -- with the reader arm-in-arm -- remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written... (more)

Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (Cultural Studies)

Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (Cultural Studies)

by Marc Auge?

An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computer and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Auge calls 'non-space' results in a profound alteration of awareness: something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Auge uses the concept of 'supermodernity' to describe the logic of these late-capitalist... (more)

City Life

by Witold Rybczynski

Tracing the development of American cities and city life from early colonial settlements to the familiar downtowns of today, a sweeping cultural history reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the land and the American lifestyle. Reprint. 25,000 first printing. NYT.

Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918

Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918

by Jeffrey D. Nichols

This book reveals insights into the complex history of prostitution in Salt Lake City. After the transcontinental railroad opened Utah to large-scale emigration and market capitalism, hundreds of women in Salt Lake City began to sell sex for a living and a few earned small fortunes. Some of the city's best-known businessmen and politicians developed a financial stake in brothels and prostitution, which was... (more)

New York Fashion

by Caroline Rennolds Milbank

Since its publication in hardcover in 1989, New York Fashion has become a defining book on the story of American fashion. Covering the great changes that have taken place in the fashion world from the early 19th century to the late 20th century, Caroline Rennolds Milbank also charts the rise of the great American designers: Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and others.

Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Working Class in American History)

Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Working Class in American History)

by Leon Fink

Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903

Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903

by Nat Brandt

On the afternoon of December 30, 1903, during a sold-out matinee performance, a fire broke out in Chicago’s Iroquois Theatre. In the short span of twenty minutes, more than six hundred people, two thirds of whom were women and children, were asphyxiated, burned, or trampled to death in a panicked mob’s failed attempt to escape. A century after the fire—the deadliest in American history—Nat Brandt provides the only... (more)

Women Who Changed the Heart of the City

by Delores T. Burger

Many unsung19th-century women tackled the worst social problems of the day while maintaining a household, raising children, and supporting their husbands' ministries. Among those included in this collection are Francis Nasmith, early rescue pioneer of 1826; Mary McAuley, former prostitute and co-founder of the first U.S. mission; Emily Trotter, a mother who prayed for her son; and Fanny Crosby who devoted herself... (more)

Fundamentalists in the City: Conflict and Division in Boston's Churches, 1885-1950 (Religion in America)

Fundamentalists in the City: Conflict and Division in Boston's Churches, 1885-1950 (Religion in America)

by Margaret Lamberts Bendroth

Fundamentalists in the City is a story of religious controversy and division, set within turn of the century and early twentieth-century Boston. It offers a new perspective on the rise of fundamentalism, emphasizing the role of local events, both sacred and secular, in deepening the divide between liberal and conservative Protestants. The first part of the narrative, beginning with the arrest of three clergymen... (more)

Black migration: Movement North, 1900-1920Florette Henri

Black migration: Movement North, 1900-1920

by Florette Henri

The Peoples of Philadelphia: A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class Life, 1790-1940 (Pennsylvania Paperbacks)

The Peoples of Philadelphia: A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class Life, 1790-1940 (Pennsylvania Paperbacks)

Although much has been written about elite Philadelphians, only in recent decades have historians paid attention to the Jews and working-class blacks, the immigrant Irish, Italians, and Poles who settled in the city and gave such sections as Moyamensing, Southwark, South Philadelphia, and Kensington their vitality. In this classic of social and ethnic history, the authors draw on census schedules, court records,... (more)

The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (Classics in Urban History, 5)

The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (Classics in Urban History, 5)

by Sam Bass Warner

Sam Bass Warner, Jr., examines the historical roots of the major economic and social problems facing the U.S. in the 1990s. He documents the efforts, both failed and successful, to provide for basic human needs in the urban context, especially for decent housing and health care. For this edition, Warner provides a new preface and Charles Tilly a new foreword.

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Tags: urban studies