Book Description
Not only is he one of the world's preeminent architecture photographers, Robert Polidori is also--as his popular book Havana proved--a master of urban portraiture. The Montreal-born photographer has made haunting studies of bombed-out buildings in Beirut, decaying New York tenements, Versailles rooms in dusty disarray, Brasilia's paean to spare '50s modernism, and, most recently, the abandoned, contaminated cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat. Taken together, they add to his ongoing project: the interpretation of the interrupted urban landscape. This new monograph combines the eye of a celebrated photographer with the distinctive voice of an artist and adventurer. Each breathtaking image--meticulously selected by the photographer from his own personal archive--is accompanied by a compelling first person account, based on interviews conducted by Martin C. Pedersen, executive editor of Metropolis magazine. Polidori tells behind-the-scene stories about the making of his photographs, takes us to war-torn Beirut and Brasilia and other world capitals, talks about what makes a building photogenic, how he shoots buildings he doesn't like, his favorite architects, and his love of mosques. A look at the world's great cities as seen through the eyes of a sharp social observer--and a great photographer.
Customer Reviews:
Photography of Architecture as Archaeology.......2005-03-12
Photographer Robert Polidori is at once a journalist and an artist and combines these two elements of inspection and observation into a remarkably beautiful and touching book.
Polidori is fascinated, even obsessed, with architecture as evidence of the presence or absence of man, praising the feats of the creators and the flaws of the destroyers. Based on his photographs of devastated buildings in Beirut, Chernobyl, Pripyat, and the crumblings of Brasilia and our own New York tenement buildings, Polidori's photographs are at once beautiful images of execution and tragic reminders of the building up and tearing down of man's proof of his existence in this civilization.
Adding to the drama of this touching portfolio are interviews with the artist sensitively conducted by Martin C. Pedersen (who just happens to be the editor of the magazine METROPOLIS). These conversations illuminate the interstices of the buildings photographed, suggesting why the hidden back rooms, stairwells, and hallways tell as much about the life of the building as do the facades Polidori finds so fascinating.
For students of Architecture, Photography, Sociology, Archaeology and for all who appreciate the fine art of photography, this is a book of rare distinction. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, March 05
Book Description
Forgotten New York is your passport to more than 300 years of history, architecture, and memories hidden in plain sight.
Houses dating to the first Dutch settlers on Staten Island; yellow brick roads in Brooklyn; clocks embedded in the sidewalk in Manhattan; bishop's crook lampposts in Queens; and a white elephant in the Bronx—this is New York and this is your guide to seeing it all. Forgotten New York covers all five boroughs with easy-to-use maps and suggested routes to hundreds of out-of-the way places, antiquated monuments, streets to nowhere, and buildings from a time lost.
Forgotten New York features:
- Quiet Places
- Truly Forgotten
- History Happened Here
- What Is This Thing?
- Forgotten People
- And so much more
Customer Reviews:
wonderful guide to the real New York.......2007-02-12
Every large city has its famous landmarks & signature structures which define it in the eyes of the world. For New York, the statue of Liberty, the Empire State building, Times Square and, after 9/11, the absence of the World Trade Towers. These are the sights that travellers and tourists want to see, and having seen them, think that they have "done" New York.
But they have surely missed the best part.
The real New York, the soul and spirit and humanity of old New York is not so obvious, although it is everywhere around. It is found in its quiet corners and intimate spaces, on its avenues and in its old neighbourhoods with names like Flatbush, Canarsie, Vinegar Hill, Spuyten Duyvil, Flushing, Astoria or Greenwich Village. It is found in the vestiges and the relics of New York's disappearing past.
"Forgotten New York" is a wonderful guidebook to 300 years of colourful personages, events and architecture found throughout all five of the City's boroughs, a guide to memories hidden in plain sight. These include many parks, alleys, doorways, gates, theatres, statues, fountains, clocks, lampposts, views, bridges, a lighthouse, signs, plaques, museums, homesteads, facades, monuments and even some ornate iron ventilation shafts.
It is profusely illustrated with photos and numerically keyed maps which make it easy to discover dozens of little gems of history right around the corner from where you live (you Lucky New Yorkers!) or not-so far from those cousins in Queens or old friends in Brooklyn you always meant to visit.
Even for a retired armchair traveller like myself, this book is a passport to rich and vibrant world far removed from the stereotyped New York we thought we knew.
More interesting Places than Any Other Guide Book.......2007-02-03
Although I live in a small town in Nevada, my daughterlives in New York City. She's an actress, and if you want to act on stage you almost have to live in New York.
We were in a book store and found this book. In flipping it over I found a really neat looking German style beet garden. I asked her where it was, and it was just around the corner, down a few blocks from her apartment. In looking at the book we found all kinds of neat places to go visit, far more than the conventional guide books.
Since she started rehersals while I was visiting, I took the book and did a great deal of walking around the city. One thing I found was an amazing amount of wreckage that you wonder why someone hasn't taken over, built something that uses the wreckage as art and developed into very expensive housing.
Basically this book is a collection of literally hundreds of interesting little tidbits from the past. They are broken down into five general categories:
Quiet Places
Truly Forgotten
History Happened Here
What is this Thing
Forgotten People.
As the author says, all you need is a metro-Card and a good pair of walking shoes.
Forgotten New York.......2007-01-28
A must read for visitors and newcomers to this town, as well as native New Yorkers. Can't wait for Part II.
mp, a lifelong Brooklynite
Excellent if you are visiting.......2007-01-14
If you are visiting NYC or even I supose if you live there, this book would be an excellent resourse. It is packed with interesting bits about the history of NYC. Little did I know that whien staying in Canarsie with friends I was literally 5 blocks from the oldest house in NY State, where teh Duke of York stayed after the Brits took New Amsterdam from the Dutch. yet the log cabin I did see only dated back to the 1930's. Where to find old st lamps, old buildings, what that "L" in that subway station in Brooklyn means cause the "L" train doesn't stop there..... it's all a fun read.
If you like the website..........2007-01-11
As a long time fan of the website, I was really excited to see that Mr. Walsh was afforded the opportunity to expand upon a great and unique idea of his. Bottomline: If you like the website, you'll love this book.
Average customer rating:
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International Communications: History, Conflict, and Control of the Global Metropolis
Robert S. Fortner
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International Communication: Concepts and Cases
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International Communication and Globalization: A Critical Introduction
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International Communication: Continuity and Change (A Hodder Arnold Publication)
ASIN: 0534190928 |
Book Description
The text moves from an overview of International Communication systems and their role in politics to a brief discussion of the technical capabilities and constraints of those systems. The next five chapters discuss the history and development of international systems and a final chapter outlines future possibilities. Throughout the book there is an emphasis on systems and structures, the architecture of international communication.
Amazon.com
An ambitious undertaking, Faust's Metropolis : A History of Berlin aims to chronicle the history of Germany through the microcosm of its most dramatic city. Alexandra Richie's thousand page tome spans from the time of Nero to Helmut Kohl. It is an encyclopedic description of the Schicksal Stadt Deutschlands--the City of German Destiny--filled with the politics of rulers and the ideology of artists.
Richie doesn't romanticize Berlin; early on, she invokes Goethe's view of the city as bourgeois, brash, and onerous. "Like the metropolis in Faust it has always been a rather shabby place," Richie comments. "It is neither an ancient gem like Rome, nor an exquisite beauty like Prague, nor a geographical marvel like Rio. It was formed not by the gentle, cultured hand which made Dresden or Venice but was wrenched from the unpromising landscape by sheer hard work and determination." By placing her historical account in a world-encompassing perspective, the culture described in Faust's Metropolis comments on the whole of Germany and its people.
The author is most eloquent in describing the recent history of the city. As a resident during its divided years, she describes Berlin as the ultimate "border city," on the frontline of the dueling Weltanschauungs of the Cold War. Her tone is familiar in describing the changing face of the city, and her enthusiasm evident as the book moves into the modern era. Filled with the insights of its unique and myriad residents, Faust's Metropolis recounts Berlin's culture, providing the reader with a thorough history and authoritative analysis.
Customer Reviews:
Alexandra Richie Hates Berlin.......2006-02-04
I was assigned Faust's Metropolis for a survey of Berlin's history. I was surprised that it was out of print only ten years after it had been published... until I actually managed to read the entire book.
Richie has a hate-on, to be blunt; she does not like Germans at all, and constructs an elaborate story of how inherently backward Berlin and Berliners while going out of her way to flatter minor Polish historical figures that few people outside of Poland have ever heard of. (Meanwhile, she provides little meaningful evidence that, outside of crazed leaders like the Soldier King, Prussia was any more regressive than other autocratic states of the time such as Poland and France.)
One wonders if Richie is some sort of objectivist, because she soon dives into a biased, counterintuitive and sometimes lo-fact carnival of attack against common Germans, the labor movement and Yalta while hagiographizing Reagan.
Nevertheless, while Richie's work clearly needs work it is perhaps the best-researched concise history of early Berlin I'm aware of, which unfortunately isn't saying a lot.
Broad in scope but horrible bias.......2005-07-25
This book has several things going for it that I particularly liked. First off I appreciate how complete it is. While one could say that that the last 150 years of Berlin history were the most important, this book gives an account of Berlin from the first settlements in the area all the way up to reunification and beyond. I particularly appreciated learning about Berlin/Cölln in the middle ages as well as what the city experienced in The 30 Years War. The book is also extremely readable and quite engrossing.
The book staggers, however, when Richie comes to World War II. There are factual errors, as other reviewers have pointed out. Richie also falls into the camp that sees the allies as having given Berlin, East Germany, and Eastern Europe away to Stalin. She claims that Roosevelt just gave the city away, accusing him of "criminally stupid behaviour" and almost suggests that Roosevelt and Stalin were somehow conspiring against Churchill. Her argument would seem more convincing if, in the following four hundred pages, she did not go out of her way to portray anyone left of Joe McCarthy in the same light.
The problem with Richie's text is that it's about absolutes. Having read the text, one gets the sense that Churchill, Adenauer, Kohl, Reagan (yes, Richie falls to Reagan's feet too, I'm surprised she didn't claim that he tore down the wall single handedly) etc. could do no wrong, whereas the East German government was only evil, all the time, thanks to the assitance of Kennedy, Willy Brandt, and Günter Grass. Not a very healthy approach to history.
great overview of euro politics.......2004-12-31
Ms Ritchie tells the story of Berlin in a truly engaging manner,don't let the length scare you,even if you are a casual lover of history.This is no dry academic treatise.And Ms.Ritchie does a tremendously good job at explaining the origins of Socialism,Communism,and Nazism--and their terrible excesses.If you want a quick,readable grasp of European politics,read this and parts of Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence.
Let the man go, purgatory for Faust.......2002-09-11
This is a swashbuckling whole shebang account of moden Germany in a Berlin track-mind, long, yet fast, and is a good backdrop to the military history of the World Wars. The good detail piles up and the book gets better towards the second half, and was especially interesting from the inter-war period onward, with short but to the point snapshot accounts of the rise of Hitler after the cultural overdrive of the Twenties. It is good to zoom in for close detail, and then zoom out to keep the pace moving, given such a long range. That the book does. And that detail tells it best, sometimes in chilling fashion. Goethe or Marlowe's Faust. You be the judge.
Too broadly focused.......2002-06-29
The part of Richie's book that was truly about Berlin was good. The problem was that she spent too much time and space discussing the history of Prussia/Germany. What I wanted -- and what I assume you are looking for -- is a history of the city of Berlin. That is, when buildings were constructed, details of municipal government, urban planning, major social events pertaining to the city, etc.
Book Description
Political Change in the Metropolis, Eighth Edition, continues to focus on the political changes that have taken place in American cities and the reactions of urban scholars to them. In addition to offering scholarly perspectives, the text offers students a theoretical framework for interpreting these changing events for themselves. This framework analyzes the patterns of bias inherent in the organization and operation of urban politics, giving students an in-depth look at the fascinating and constantly changing face of urban politics.
Customer Reviews:
BORING.......1999-09-14
This snorefest of a book is chock full of redieration from every other political based textbook I have ever read. This complete waste of a tree, is a pointless exercise in jargon and double speak. Spare yourself hours of trance-like boredom and buy something else.
Average customer rating:
- The best pictorial history of London Transport
- Keep the London Transport Museum on your coffee table
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Moving Metropolis
Shelia Ortiz Taylor
Manufacturer: Laurence King
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ASIN: 1856692418 |
Book Description
Over the past two centuries, the city of London has grown at an incredible rate. This growth has been closely linked with the expansion of its public transport services, facilitating its dramatic urban expansion in the Victorian era and its later suburban expansion up to the mid-twentieth century. The Moving Metropolis is the first work to cover the entire history of public transport in London. Filled with contemporary and vintage photographs, sketches, plans, and engravings, it brings to life every significant phase, from early water transport, horse buses, trolleys, and the steam underground up to the tube and the colorful double-decker buses that have made getting around London's famously haphazard streets both an adventure and a pleasure.
The book is organized chronologically, with each chapter containing an illustrated opening essay, hundreds of images highlighted by extensive captions, and sidebars that focus on intriguing themes. In addition to illustrations of vehicles, stations, and waiting rooms, there are contemporary photographs and engravings of the construction and operation of the transport network, its innovative and artfully designed posters, and the personalities and structures that lend the system—and its history—its remarkable character. The wealth of visual and textual material in this generous volume amply demonstrates how intimately intertwined are the history of London and its public transport.
· First complete history of the London transport
· 1,200 illustrations
· An exciting read for anyone interested in the history of London
Customer Reviews:
The best pictorial history of London Transport.......2002-03-17
If you lived in London during the last few decades you will know how important London Transport was in getting about the city and this book celebrates the ups and downs of the Company in 1200 (mostly color) photos, illusrations, diagrams and maps all with excellent long captions.
Browsing through the pages I realised what visionary people ran the Company in the first half of the past century. The chapter dealing with the Second World War has some fascinating photos of how the LT managed in this difficult period, one shows aircraft components being made in a subway tunnel.
If I have a criticism it is that the thirty or so bus and subway route maps are too small and bear in mind that although LT ran the buses all over London, south of the Thames there were only three subway lines for many years, rail transport was provided by Southern Railways and they are not covered. The design and production of the book is excellent.
The world famour Underground map is mentioned and if you want to know more about it have a look at 'Mr Beck's Underground Map' by Ken Garland, a lovely book published in 1994 with everything you'll need to know about Harry Beck's masterpiece.
Keep the London Transport Museum on your coffee table.......2001-06-26
This is an excellent coffee table book for graphic designers (especially those interested in corporate identity), architects, urban planners, trainspotters, London-philes, and casual social historians. While it is -- thankfully -- not a weighty academic treatise on the development of London's public transportation system, "Moving Metropolis" is a wonderfully illustrated timeline of the same and does highlight the key social and political developments en route.
The gorgeous illustrations draw upon the vast resources of the London Transport Museum, and the book serves quite nicely as a virtual tour of this institution. As a graphic designer I was especially taken by the craft and layout of "Moving Metropolis". It is beautifully designed, giving appropriate weight to the illustrations, and the text and captions are beautifully set and easy to read. The paper quality is outstanding. This is all very much in keeping with London Transport's traditionally high standard of design.
My only criticism is that the "Moving Metropolis" in perhaps not sufficiently rigorous from an academic standpoint. I would not have been opposed to a more in-depth analysis of the social and political developments that impacted the growth of London's public transportation system. That being said, I am just as happy that this particular book is exactly the way it is. I will display is proudly on my coffee table and expect that I shall refer to it frequently -- especially when a trip to Covent Garden is less than practical.
Book Description
The pulse of great cities may be most palpable above ground, but it is below the busy streets where we can observe their rich archaeological history and the infrastructure that keeps them running. In The Secret Lives of Cities journalist Alex Marshall investigates how geological features, archaeological remnants of past civilizations, and layered networks transporting water, electricity, and people, have shaped these cities through centuries of political turbulence and advancements in engineering — and how they are determining the course of the cities' future.
From the first-century catacombs of Rome, the New York subway system, and the swamps and ancient quays beneath London, to San Francisco's fault lines, the depleted aquifer below Mexico City, and Mao Tse-tung's extensive network of secret tunnels under Beijing, these subterranean environments offer a unique cross-section of a city's history and future.
Stunningly illustrated with colorful photographs, drawings, and maps, The Secret Lives of Cities reveals the hidden worlds beneath our feet, and charts the cities' development through centuries of forgotten history, political change, and technological innovation.
Customer Reviews:
Amazingly Revealing!.......2007-05-30
I highly recommend this book to anyone curious about the history and underworkings of the great cities of the world. It gave me a new appreciation for what goes in to the planning, creation and development of a major city.
What's there beneath our feet.........2007-03-23
I almost started by stating this book isn't for the average reader. But, I'm an average reader, and frankly I found the information within it fascinating. Coincidentally I lived in N.Y.C., and have a little more experience with its underground infrastructure than just having been a straphanger (subway rider). Mr. Marshall has a no nonsense writing style, and his research has resulted in much interesting information regarding what's buried beneath our feet. The history of how, and why things got, and get buried in the first place makes the book all the more enlightening. Especially the consideration that things get buried as a result of debris that accumulates over time, and how history is lost, and then sometimes rediscovered in the process of modernization.
Explaining the Underworld.......2006-12-29
A beautiful book, monumental piece of research, with clear and engaging prose and a great mix of maps, illustrations, capsule histories, lively facts, and timelines. If you ever stood over a manhole or at the dark edge of a subway tunnel and wondered, "What's down there?" then this book will tell you. Beneath the Metropolis describes what's underneath 12 world cities -- New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Mexico City, Paris, London, Rome, Cairo, Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow and Sydney. With pith and concision, Marshall details the infrastructure, the archeology and the geology. In Paris, we learn about the fossilized bones and the beautiful sewers and subways. In Rome, we tour the ancient ruins and rickety subway (did you know there was one?). In Beijing, we learn about the vast network of cold war tunnels that few visit. Marshall uses each city's underground to trace its history, politics and economics. It's a pleasure to learn how successful cities, like London or Paris, can take different approaches to infrastructure. As a fellow author and former Columbia classmate, I admire and envy Marshall's success in wrestling such a huge topic into a pleasurable masterpiece. Beneath the Metropolis is destined for many a reader's nightstand as well as planning and political offices and classrooms.
--Christopher D. Ringwald, author of A Day Apart: How Jews, Christians, and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom, and Joy on the Sabbath (Oxford, 2007)
Amazon.com
One of the foremost practitioners of New Urbanism, Peter Calthorpe, an urban designer and architect based in Berkeley, California, offers one of the most coherent and persuasive arguments for moving the United States away from sprawl and toward more compact, mixed-use, economically diverse, and ecologically sound communities. This book presents 24 of Calthorpe's regional urban plans, in which towns are organized so that residents can be less dependent upon their cars and can walk, bike, or take public transportation between work, school, home, and shopping. This book is not just for architects and urban planners, but for all concerned citizens interested in developing a cohesive, feasible vision of the sustainable city of the future.
Book Description
Regarding issues of urban sprawl Visit Sprawl Net, at Rice University. It's under construction, but it should be an interesting resource. Check out the traffic in the land of commuting. And, finally, enjoy Los Angeles: Revisiting the Four Ecologies.
Customer Reviews:
A Small Step.......2002-06-12
The one point in favor of this book is that it promotes a much-needed land use concept: Plan and build near transit. The critical downfall of the book is that it perpetuates the auto-centric lifestyle. While Europe and Asia are beginning to perfect pedestrian districts around their transit stops, the best that we Americans can do is to simply build residential units with 2 parking spaces each near metro stops. Too much land (typically 40%) is wasted in providing for streets, alleys, driveways, and the large number of parking spaces for each vehicle.
Such a design is still auto-centric if it makes automobile use the quickest and easiest way to shop at [a physical store] versus providing a pedestrian environment to walk 2 blocks to shop at a Mom & Pop store. Pedestrian environments with local grocery/pharmacy, schools, offices, day-care, sports fields, and other weekly needs are going to be able to eliminate 90% of automotive travel requirements. The other 10% can be easily provided through carsharing, a fast growing market in 21 North American cities now. Parking structures on the periphery of the district provides parking for carsharing and private automobiles (though the latter is retained by a modest percentage of households).
A book that envisions the progression of cities to pedestrian/transit use is Carfree Cities, by J.H. Crawford. There are also many websites that describe the many carfree areas already in place in Europe and Asia, whose residents require very little in the way of imported oil.
A must read!.......2000-05-02
This work is terrific if one is interested at all in the way in which cities could be developed. The ideas which Calthorpe presents are revolutionary and instrumental if one wishes to gain any sort of idea of the concepts and ideas proposed by "New Urbanism". His explanation of his Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is vital in understanding the difference between these developments and traditional versions. His use of specific examples makes the work that much better as it becomes more tangible and less simply theory. I would highly recomend this book to anyone involved in any sort of urban or city planning or simply interested in cities themselves.
Amazon.com
Cronon's history of 19th-century Chicago is in fact the history of the widespread effects of a single city on millions of square miles of ecological, cultural, and economic frontier. Cronon combines archival accuracy, ecological evaluation, and a sweeping understanding of the impact of railroads, stockyards, catalog companies, and patterns of property on the design of development of the entire inland United States to this date. Although focused on Chicago and the U.S., the general lessons it teaches are of global significance, and a rich source of metaphors for the ways in which colonization of physical space operates differently from, and similarly to, colonization of cyberspace. This is a compelling, wise, thorough--and thoroughly accessible--masterpiece of history writ large. Very Highest Recommendation.
Customer Reviews:
A review from an armchair historian........2006-08-13
There are going to be other reviewers who can provide more erudite reviews-- reviews better grounded in the study of cities or economic history. I am nothing more than an average reader who enjoys non-fiction.
First of all, potential readers should be aware that this is an econonomic history. It follows flows of goods and capital rather than following the lives and careers of the men and women of Chicago. I knew what to expect, but for people looking for a more standard history of Chicago this may make Nature's Metropolis difficult to engage.
I really enjoyed reading the book. It stretched my understanding of the economic growth of cities and raised issues that I had not considered about the role of the city *in* nature (not as opposed to nature). The examination of elements that made Chicago into both a city and The City was fascinating. The chapters tracing grain, lumber and meat as goods were clearly written and underscored the central theses.
I guess it goes without saying that Nature's Metropolis is far from a light read, but that does not make it less rewarding. As someone who does not have a background in history, I only longingly wished that the bibliography had been annotated to help support further reading.
Distinctive and valuable history of urban growth & development.......2006-04-21
This is a very distinctive, well researched and argued book about how Chicago developed. Starting with a standard model of Urban Economics - the von Thunen model of central place theory- the author quickly moves beyond it. The distinctive contribution of his book is Cronon's emphasis on how the roots of Chicago's remarkable development lay in the "soil" of its surrounding hinterlands. He carries this argument further by examining how the transportation and communication revolutions of the 19th century - the railroad and the telegraph - created unique advanatages for Chicago relative to other competitive metropolitan areas (such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee) and finally, how in turn, new metropolitan areas (such as KC, Omaha) arose to steal aways Chicago's dominance.
As other reviewers have noted, the book offers really fascinating, detailed discussions and original research on - for example - the grain and lumber industries as well as capital flows in the midwestern US creatively using court records on corporate failures to track the flow of investments.
This books contains a rich lode of intellectual wealth and it is well worth the effort to mine it.
Solid on Both Facts and Theory.......2004-01-07
Been dying to read this book for at least six months. Finally found it at a used book store for six bucks! Huzzah!
Having now read the book, I probably would have shelled out for it new or used at the 10+ bucks it commands here on Amazon. The 18 reviews below indicates that this is a fairly popular work. That's more then three times the reviews of the other history books I've checked out on Amazon.
Since the other reviews are substantial, I won't comment much, except to say that while several reviewers have commented on the role of "first" and "second" nature in this book, I didn't see anybody mentioning his use of "Central Place Theory", which was apparently developed by German theorists in the 1800's. He also doesn't discuss Lewis Mumford at all, even though he cites to that author in the bibliography.
I thought this book made an interesting contrast with "Imperial San Francisco", another book about the development of a western city. I was hoping Cronon would include more information about the "flow of capital" between Chicago and the FAR west, rather then focusing so intently on Chicago's immediate hinterland.
Cronon chose to focus on a description of the processes which led to the creation of Chicago. It might have been interesting to look at the ways in which the interests of wealthy individuals tracked across various industries and time. A point made in "Industrial San Francisco" was that the oligarch's who made money in mining gradually "cleansed" their money through the purchase of utilities and media firms(newspapers). Did something similar occur in Chicago? I suspect so, but Cronon's treatment of the newspaper/media industry is largely descriptive.
Great for readers interested in history, ecology, economics.......2003-11-21
I remember, many years ago, standing next to an Illinois corn field at the intersection 212th and Cicero and wondering how Chicago's street grid system had worked its way so far into the country side. What in the world did this corn field and the intersection of State and Madison in downtown Chicago have to do with each other? This book explained it to me along the economic history of Chicago -- a history that went a lot farther in explaining the citys size, influence, and even existence than the biographies Marshal Field, Potter Palmer, the Colonel, and the rest.
Great read.
Best 'textbook' ever.......2003-02-09
This was the best book I've ever had assigned in a class. It was part of the assigned readings for a Princeton University course "History of the American West". Perhaps the context of the class helped to make the book, but it is still well written and seems to strike a good balance between a historical view and an economic view of the story it tells.
Book Description
Most books that study professional sports concentrate on teams and leagues. In contrast, Home Team studies the connections between professional team sports in North America and the places where teams play. It examines the relationships between the four major professional team sports--baseball, basketball, football, and hockey--and the cities that attach their names, their hearts, and their increasing amount of tax dollars to big league teams. From the names on their uniforms to the loyalties of their fans, teams are tied to the places in which they play. Nonetheless, teams, like other urban businesses, are affected by changes in their environments--like the flight of their customers to suburbs and changes in local political climates. In Home Team, professional sports are scrutinized in the larger context of the metropolitan areas that surround and support them.
Michael Danielson is particularly interested in the political aspects of the connections between professional sports teams and cities. He points out that local and state governments are now major players in the competition for franchises, providing increasingly lavish publicly funded facilities for what are, in fact, private business ventures. As a result, professional sports enterprises, which have insisted that private leagues rather than public laws be the proper means of regulating games, have become powerful political players, seeking additional benefits from government, often playing off one city against another. The wide variety of governmental responses reflects the enormous diversity of urban and state politics in the United States and in the Canadian cities and provinces that host professional teams.
Home Team collects a vast amount of data, much of it difficult to find elsewhere, including information on the relocation of franchises, expansion teams, new leagues, stadium development, and the political influence of the rich cast of characters involved in the ongoing contests over where teams will play and who will pay. Everyone who is interested in the present condition and future prospects of professional sports will be captivated by this informative and provocative new book.
Customer Reviews:
The best overview of the sports industry and the politics of stadiums.......2006-12-30
"Michael Danielson has produced the most thorough and evenhanded analysis yet of the politics of sports and cities. He focuses on the way that sports teams foster and exploit a sense of 'place,' particularly in cities were dynamic economic growth or decline undermines a more organic and abiding civic identity." -- Charles Euchner, author of "Playing the Field," writing in The American Political Science Review, March 1998, p. 227.
Home Team.......2000-02-09
Actually, I'd like to review the book in my newspaper, which is published in Ontario, Canada. Is it possible to have it and Field of Schemes couriered to me. You can reach me by email or at (905) 526-3422. Thanks, JK
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