Since the appearance of Urban America in the Modern Age in 1987, the
study of American cities has flourished. In this long-awaited second
edition, Carl Abbott draws on the recent works of historians who have
explored issues of urban growth, municipal politics, immigration and
ethnicity, "suburbanization," and environmental change. The fascination
with growth and change in the nation's metropolitan areas spans a wide
range of scholarly fields, and the new edition also benefits from
scholarship in disciplines closely related to urban history, including
geography, political science, sociology, and urban planning.
Featuring an entirely new chapter covering the years since 1980 and a
bank of interesting photographs, the second edition of Urban America in
the Modern Age further explores and fine-tunes the themes and topics
central to its predecessor--the physical form of metropolitan areas,
their sources of growth and mix of ethnic and racial groups, the shaping
of and responses to public policy, and ideas of community planning.
Regionally balanced--with examples from New York, Boston, and Chicago,
as well as Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, San
Antonio, Miami, Charlotte, Washington, Detroit, and Cleveland--the
second edition of Urban America in the Modern Age makes ideal
supplementary reading for courses in Urban History, twentieth-century
America, as well as the second half of the U.S. survey.
