Why Don't American Cities Burn?

Why Don't American Cities Burn?
Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages : 220
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780812205206
ISBN-13 : 0812205200
Rating : 4/5 (200 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Why Don't American Cities Burn? by : Michael B. Katz

Download or read book Why Don't American Cities Burn? written by Michael B. Katz and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-05-25 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 1:27 on the morning of August 4, 2005, Herbert Manes fatally stabbed Robert Monroe, known as Shorty, in a dispute over five dollars. It was a horrific yet mundane incident for the poor, heavily African American neighborhood of North Philadelphia—one of seven homicides to occur in the city that day and yet not make the major newspapers. For Michael B. Katz, an urban historian and a juror on the murder trial, the story of Manes and Shorty exemplified the marginalization, social isolation, and indifference that plague American cities. Introduced by the gripping narrative of this murder and its circumstances, Why Don't American Cities Burn? charts the emergence of the urban forms that underlie such events. Katz traces the collision of urban transformation with the rightward-moving social politics of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America. He shows how the bifurcation of black social structures produced a new African American inequality and traces the shift from images of a pathological black "underclass" to praise of the entrepreneurial poor who take advantage of new technologies of poverty work to find the beginning of the path to the middle class. He explores the reasons American cities since the early 1970s have remained relatively free of collective violence while black men in bleak inner-city neighborhoods have turned their rage inward on one another rather than on the agents and symbols of a culture and political economy that exclude them. The book ends with a meditation on how the political left and right have come to believe that urban transformation is inevitably one of failure and decline abetted by the response of government to deindustrialization, poverty, and race. How, Katz asks, can we construct a new narrative that acknowledges the dark side of urban history even as it demonstrates the capacity of government to address the problems of cities and their residents? How can we create a politics of modest hope?


Why Don't American Cities Burn? Related Books

Why Don't American Cities Burn?
Language: en
Pages: 220
Authors: Michael B. Katz
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-05-25 - Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At 1:27 on the morning of August 4, 2005, Herbert Manes fatally stabbed Robert Monroe, known as Shorty, in a dispute over five dollars. It was a horrific yet mu
Police Power and Race Riots
Language: en
Pages: 312
Authors: Cathy Lisa Schneider
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-07-17 - Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Three weeks after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a New York City police officer shot and killed a fifteen-year-old black youth, inciting th
American Democracy and Disconsent
Language: en
Pages: 325
Authors: Daniel Monti
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-04-09 - Publisher: Taylor & Francis

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume is a thorough re-examination of civil unrest and discontent in the United States, particularly the intersection of democracy and violence. The work
Urban Politics
Language: en
Pages: 1361
Authors: Stephen J. McGovern
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-02-16 - Publisher: CQ Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Steve McGovern’s Urban Politics: A Reader examines the changing structure of political power in cities through the lens of historical development, accompanied
Caught
Language: en
Pages: 504
Authors: Marie Gottschalk
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-02-16 - Publisher: Princeton University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A major reappraisal of crime and punishment in America The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders, yet reforms to reduce the numbers of