The Center Cannot Hold: Historians and the Suburbs

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart M. Blumin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Single Family ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Suburban Studies ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Suburban Life ◽  
The City

In 1962 Sam Bass Warner, Jr., published an important book about suburbanization in late nineteenth-century Boston. Like most influential books, it was timely in its subject, and Warner's scholarly study might be supposed to have built upon the interest that was being generated by numerous popular analyses of contemporary suburbanization and suburban life in post—World War II America. One can indeed find in Streetcar Suburbs the same fundamental preoccupation with the shallowness of communal life and similar diagnoses of the sprawl of single-family homes in homogeneous and militantly residential areas on the periphery of the city, as one finds in say, William H. Whyte's 1956 critique, The Organization Man.' Yet Warner's book was not part of, and did not initiate, a new genre of historical suburban studies. Instead, it served as one of the essential founding texts of what came to be known as the “new urban history”—a large number of scholarly attempts to examine the character and structure of life at the center of the developing big cities of industrializing America. Not the “crabgrass frontier” but the “urban frontier” defined the territory of historical adventure during the 1960s. The metaphor is not, and was not then, entirely an academic one. In 1961 the new President of the United States had called for a “new frontier” of public initiative, and planner Charles Abrams helped his immediate successor expand and locate that initiative with his book, The City Is the Frontier. Without entirely losing interest in the suburbs, scholars, policymakers, and citizens of various kinds suddenly realized the importance of understanding the city and its history.

Law and War in the Virtual Era

2009 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack M. Beard
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
Effects Of War ◽  
The City

Since the first attempts by states to use law to regulate armed conflict, legal constraints have often failed to protect civilians from the adverse effects of war. Advances in military technology have usually not improved this situation and have instead made law even more distant and less relevant to the suffering of civilians in wartime. The massive, indiscriminate incendiary bombing campaigns against major urban areas in World War II spoke volumes about the irrelevance of fundamental legal principles and rules designed to protect civilian populations in wartime. Law and lawyers were in fact far removed, physically and operationally, from the cockpits of the United States bombers flying over Tokyo, whose aircrews were focused on surviving their missions. They struggled with limited information about their assigned targets and conducted their operations with rudimentary preflight instructions that directed them, for example, to avoid destroying the palace of the Japanese emperor but left them free to submerge entire residential areas of the city in a sea of flames.

Rebuilding the City, Leaving it behind

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wells
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Fringe ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Suburban Developments ◽  
The City

As U.S. cities burgeoned in the late nineteenth century, their environmental problems multiplied. In response, some urban elites worked to rebuild the city to alleviate its environmental ills; others relocated to more environmentally enticing surroundings in new suburban developments. For members of both groups, new forms of transportation infrastructure profoundly shaped how they responded to the era's environmental crisis. Whereas efforts to rebuild and retrofit downtown were hampered by the difficulties and expense of working in densely built and populated areas, efforts to build on the urban fringe faced few serious obstacles. As a result, the most significant late nineteenth-century attempts to use transportation to remake city dwellers' relationships with nature in the United States - including tools developed with an eye on rebuilding dense city centers - exercised far greater influence on the expanding periphery of cities than on their environmentally fraught cores.

Dwight Eisenhower

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear Arsenal ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
American Society ◽  
The 1960S

Assessments of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s performance as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II and the nation’s thirty-fourth president have evolved across the more than seventy-five years from the conclusion of World War II in 1945 to the dedication in 2020 of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC. Historians have sought to explain Eisenhower’s unlikely rise from his modest upbringing in Abilene, Kansas, to his ascendance to command of western allies in the European theater. Selected over several senior officers in 1942 to command the invasion of North Africa (Operation Torch), Eisenhower initially experienced a series of setbacks and controversies resulting from inexperienced troops, incompetent subordinate leaders, a formidable enemy, and political deals with leaders of Vichy France. Although historians continue to debate his decisions regarding command and strategy in the European theater, they generally praise Eisenhower’s ability to maintain the western alliance amid national rivalries, professional jealousies, strong personalities, and competing political ambitions. Assessments of Eisenhower’s performance as president have undergone a remarkable transformation. Initially ranked in 1961 near the bottom in assessments of presidential leadership, he currently appears within the top tier. Initial accounts in the 1960s portrayed Eisenhower as a bumbling, docile president who appeared to be out of touch with the basic policies and operations of his administration. He appeared unwilling to address the major issues confronting American society, and to defer to his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, on matters of foreign policy and national security. For his critics, Eisenhower perilously, inflexibly, and imprudently relied upon the superiority of the nation’s nuclear arsenal to contain communist expansion, then allowed the Soviet Union to beat the United States into space and create a missile gap. Scholars collectively labeled “Eisenhower Revisionists” assessing declassified documents beginning in the mid-1970s forged a revised consensus that Eisenhower was clearly thoughtful, informed, and firmly in command of his administration. Moreover, the nation’s nuclear arsenal retained and even strengthened its predominance of power. “Postrevisionist” analysts generally concur that Eisenhower was clearly the dominant decision-maker and developed an effective policy development process, but they question the efficacy of some of his decisions and policies, including his management of crises in this dangerous period of the Cold War, his increased use of covert operations and propaganda, his approach to decolonization, and his efforts to ease tensions and slow the nuclear arms race.

Japanese Commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith L. Camacho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mariana Islands ◽  
World War ◽  
War Memories ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
A Site

This chapter examines the creation and contestation of Japanese commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands. As an archipelago colonized by Japan and the United States, the Mariana Islands have become a site through which war memories have developed in distinct and shared ways. With respect to Japanese commemorations, the analysis demonstrates why and how they inform and are informed by Chamorro and American remembrances of the war in the Mariana Islands. By analyzing government, media, and tourist accounts of the war from the 1960s to the present, I thus show how we can gain an understanding and appreciation for the complex ways by which Japanese of various generations reckon with a violent past.

Getting Acquainted with the University and the City, 1960s–Early 1970s

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-112
Author(s):  
Uzma Quraishi
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Students ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
University Of Houston ◽  
College Towns ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

Chapter 2 details the arrival of South Asian students and immigrants in Houston during the 1960s. Along with college towns and major cities across the United States, Houston was an ideal host city for would-be immigrants. South Asians constructed ethnic, national, class, and racial identities through the university and the city. The University of Houston became the cultural hub and a key site for identity formation.

From American Exceptionalism to the Great Compression

2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.

Something Has Changed

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-192
Author(s):  
Jack Reid
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Personal Safety ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Ride Sharing ◽  
National Values ◽  
The 1960S

The epilogue summarizes key arguments in the book and reflects on ideas about ride solicitation in contemporary society—noting the intersections between hitchhiking and modern ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. Hitchhiking was common for decades in the United States, because it complimented the transportation needs of a cross-section of Americans while also meshing with the nation’s values—whether it be during the Great Depression, World War II, or the “hitchhiking renaissance” of the 1960s and ‘70s. The practice lost traction when thumbing rides fell out of touch with national values amid the rise of the conservative movement, increasing transportation regimentation, and growing concerns for personal safety.

Abdominal Trauma Revisited

2017 ◽  
Vol 83 (11) ◽  
pp. 1193-1202 ◽  
Author(s):  
David V. Feliciano
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Abdominal Trauma ◽  
Damage Control ◽  
Gunshot Wounds ◽  
The United States ◽  
Operative Approach ◽  
Contrast Enhanced Ct ◽  
The 1960S

Although abdominal trauma has been described since antiquity, formal laparotomies for trauma were not performed until the 1800s. Even with the introduction of general anesthesia in the United States during the years 1842 to 1846, laparotomies for abdominal trauma were not performed during the Civil War. The first laparotomy for an abdominal gunshot wound in the United States was finally performed in New York City in 1884. An aggressive operative approach to all forms of abdominal trauma till the establishment of formal trauma centers (where data were analyzed) resulted in extraordinarily high rates of nontherapeutic laparotomies from the 1880s to the 1960s. More selective operative approaches to patients with abdominal stab wounds (1960s), blunt trauma (1970s), and gunshot wounds (1990s) were then developed. Current adjuncts to the diagnosis of abdominal trauma when serial physical examinations are unreliable include the following: 1) diagnostic peritoneal tap/lavage, 2) surgeon-performed ultrasound examination; 3) contrast-enhanced CT of the abdomen and pelvis; and 4) diagnostic laparoscopy. Operative techniques for injuries to the liver, spleen, duodenum, and pancreas have been refined considerably since World War II. These need to be emphasized repeatedly in an era when fewer patients undergo laparotomy for abdominal trauma. Finally, abdominal trauma damage control is a valuable operative approach in patients with physiologic exhaustion and multiple injuries.

Lifestyle

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-301
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Central Cities ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

This essay offers a genealogy of lifestyle, a category widely used in the 1960s to mark dissident kinship networks and sexual practices: single parenting, bisexuality, gender nonconformity, polyamory, cohabitation, and communal living, among many others. I argue that the concept of lifestyle emerged in a desire among white mid-twentieth-century suburbanites for the social and sexual worlds that preceded rapid suburbanization, those most visible in the immigrant industrial metropolis at its peak in the decades immediately before the United States drastically restricted immigration in 1924. Even at the apex of suburbanization in the 1960s, many people refused to comply with the demand for suburban domesticity, staying in the city, joining countercultural groups, or adopting what came to be called alternative lifestyles. But in that act of dissent, urban planners, real estate developers, and marketing experts saw an opportunity and began to sell urban lifestyle landscapes that they claimed would reproduce the sexual heterogeneity of the early twentieth-century industrial metropolis. By the 1980s, as ever more people lived outside the nuclear family, a growing lifestyle market drove up prices in central cities that amplified the class and race exclusions that the social movements of the 1960s contested. This article is therefore both a critical and a recuperative reading of lifestyle, one that uses the category to show how dissident sexualities can be both the harbinger of the niche-marketed gentrified city and an incitement to new ways of living and loving that advance the pursuit of economic justice.

Repositioning Indianness: Native American Organizations in Portland, Oregon, 1959––1975

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas G. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Indians ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Relations ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Shifts

This article examines the processes of community building among American Indians who migrated to Portland, Oregon, in the decades following World War II, contextualized within a larger movement of Indians to the cities of the United States and shifts in government relations with Indian people. It argues that, during the 1960s, working-and middle-class Indians living in Portland came together and formed groups that enabled them to cultivate "Indianness" or to "be Indian" in the city. As the decade wore on, Indian migration to Portland increased, the social problems of urban Indians became more visible, and a younger generation emerged to challenge the leadership of Portland's established Indian organizations. Influenced by both their college educations and a national Indian activist movement, these new leaders promoted a repositioning of Indianness, taking Indian identity as the starting point from which to solve urban Indian problems. By the mid-1970s, the younger generation of college-educated Indians gained a government mandate and ascended to the helm of Portland's Indian community. In winning support from local, state, and federal officials, these leaders reflected fundamental changes under way in the administration of U.S. Indian affairs not only in Portland, but also across the country.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document