t is difficult to exaggerate the dread
and sense of crisis that the urban
poor inspired in most citizens of
the United States a century ago.
The phenomenally rapid industri-
alization that had been underway since the Civil War was attracting millions of eastern and southern Europeans to America's sweatshops, steel mills, and railyards. The influx of these "more foreign foreigners," more alien in language, cus- toms, and religion than the Irish and Ger- man immigrants who preceded th...
Americans remember the those who recall the 1950s as a time of so- 1950s for many things, but cial stagnation, Cold War belligerence, high among them is the im- and hidden turbulence, Eisenhower has age of Dwight D. Eisen- seemed (like the decade itself) bland, inef- hower, the genial, smiling fectual, mediocre-a man, Arthur Schle- national hero whose reas- singer has written, "who did not always suring presence seemed to symbolize the understand and control what was going halcyon days of...
is name was Orson Squire
Fowler. In his day, it was a
name to be reckoned
with, a name that gar-
nered notice-and in
some cases tributes-from many of his triple-monikered con- temporaries: Julia Ward Howe, Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar Allan Poe, to name a few.
He is largely forgotten now. He was buried just over a century ago in an un- marked grave in the Bronx, and there is no monument to his memory or his varied achievements. But there are ma...
Reviews of new research at public agencies and private institutions
"American Indians: The First of This Land."
Russell Sage Foundation, 112 E. 64th St., New York, N.Y. 10021. 408 pp. $49.95.
Author: C. Matthew Snipp
The 1980 census revealed two landmarks in the history of the North American Indians. For the first time in over two cen- turies, their population ex-ceeded one million. It also re- vealed that American Indians, who just a decade earlier were the poorest group in the...
Something new is appearing on the American landscape. Architects, planners, and others have given it a variety of names-spread city, slurb, exurb, edge city, sprawl. The profusion of vaguely ominous names is only one sign of our deep uncertainty about what this new thing is. Is it merely the old suburb swollen beyond all proportion? Or are we seeing the distinction between city and suburb gradually being erased? Historian Robert Fishman believes that a "new city," utterly without precedent,...
Historian Robert Fishman believes that a "new city," utterly without precedent, is arising. If its opportunities are recognized, he argues, Americans' long quest to combine the amenities of technological civilization with the pleasures of natural surroundings may at last be
rewarded. If they are not, the failure will blight the landscape of America--and the lives of Americans--for generations to come.
it. His ideal was the medieval city, which he argued had been unjustly ma- ligned.
Our images of plague-ridden city dwellers clad in filthy rags come from a later era, Mum- ford argued. He insisted that life in the medi- eval city was generally healthy and fulfilling, rich in architectural beauty and civic life. Most important to him was the openness to nature that the cities' "clustered" housing made possi- ble. "Gardens and orchards, sometimes fields and pastures, existed within...
y fire or by ice? wondered Robert Frost. With a bang or with a whimper? wondered T.
S. Eliot. In the chronicles of our mortal race there may have been one or two people,
for example William ("I decline to accept the end of man") Faulkner, who did not concede that a bold Finis would one day be scrawled at the conclusion of the human saga. There may have been one or two who would not have been tempted-were only it possible!-to skip ahead to the final chap- ters of our story and discover ho...
The Greeks named Europe for the princess Europa, who, according to myth, so charmed Zeus that he transformed himself into a bull and carried her off from the Middle East to Crete. Zeus promised her that their sons would rule "over all men on earth." Europe has often seemed, in another sense of the word, no more than a myth.
Steven Lagerfeld describes the journey to European Unity; Josef Joffe points to
the formidable obstacles that remain.