The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives, 112) - Softcover

Sugrue, Thomas J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691121869 ISBN 13: 9780691121864

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of racial and economic inequality in modern America, Thomas Sugrue explains how Detroit and many other once prosperous industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Probing beneath the veneer of 1950s prosperity and social consensus, Sugrue traces the rise of a new ghetto, solidified by changes in the urban economy and labor market and by racial and class segregation.

In this provocative revision of postwar American history, Sugrue finds cities already fiercely divided by race and devastated by the exodus of industries. He focuses on urban neighborhoods, where white working-class homeowners mobilized to prevent integration as blacks tried to move out of the crumbling and overcrowded inner city. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II.

In a new preface, Sugrue discusses the ongoing legacies of the postwar transformation of urban America and engages recent scholars who have joined in the reassessment of postwar urban, political, social, and African American history.

About this title

About the Author:

Thomas J. Sugrue is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Review:

"Winner of the 1998 Bancroft Prize in American History"

"Praise for Princeton's previous edition:"[Sugrue's] disciplined historical engagement with a complex, often inglorious, past offers a compelling model for understanding how race and the Rust Belt converged to create the current impasse."" (America)

"Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "A splendid book that does no less than transform our understanding of United States history after 1940."" (Labor History)

"Winner of the 1996 President's Book Award, Social Science History Association"

"Winner of the 1997 Philip Taft Prize in Labor History"

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1997"

"Winner of the 1997 Best Book in North American Urban History Award, Urban History Association"

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0691121869
• ISBN 13: 9780691121864
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416