{"product_id":"brain-magnet-9780231184908","title":"Brain Magnet","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlex Sayf Cummings reveals the significance of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park to the emergence of the high-tech economy in a postindustrial United States. \u003ci\u003eBrain Magnet\u003c\/i\u003e pinpoints how it sheds new light on the origins of today’s urban landscape, in which innovation is lauded as the engine of economic growth against a backdrop of inequality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom tobacco and plow to computer and creative economy, this rich and eloquent history shows how a group of civic leaders put rural North Carolina at the forefront of the postindustrial revolution. In California, they say Silicon Valley is one of a kind; this marvelous book proves otherwise. -- Fred Turner, author of \u003ci\u003eFrom Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNorth Carolina’s Research Triangle emerged a half century or so ago as one of a veritable handful of the original suburban high-tech “office parks.\"  Though its allure has been challenged  by the rise of urban tech and the return of innovation and high-tech industries to big cities, the Triangle persists.  \u003ci\u003eBrain Magnet\u003c\/i\u003e provides a much-needed historical account of the rise and challenges of this model of high-tech development. -- Richard Florida, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlex Cummings has written a brilliant history of the unlikely making of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.   The RTP has proven to be a grand success—but not for everyone. Cummings’s site-specific account of the idea economy gives us much to ponder. -- David Farber, author of \u003ci\u003e Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBrain Magnet\u003c\/i\u003e does essential work in connecting the historical processes of urban development to the social, spatial, and intellectual influences of universities. There are many more cases like RTP across the nation. Now scholars have a blueprint to better analyze them. -- Walter D. Greason, author of \u003ci\u003eSuburban Erasure: How the Suburbs Ended the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn an excellent treatment of the emergence of the postindustrial economy in the U.S. South, Cummings does a great job of chronicling the seeds of economic transformation using an underexplored case study. -- Bill Graves, coeditor of \u003ci\u003eCharlotte, NC: The Global Evolution of a New South City\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSmart and insightful...eminently readable. -- Peter Coclanis * Triangle Business Journal *\u003cbr\u003eA stellar contribution to multiple historical subfields, \u003ci\u003eBrain Magnet \u003c\/i\u003eexemplifies the best of the History of Capitalism. Demystifying the rhetoric of boosters and underscoring the uneven outcomes of postindustrial capitalism, the book adds to the growing urban history literature on the high tech economy, * Metropole *\u003cbr\u003eDemonstrates that the economic revolution that transformed the Triangle in the last half of the twentieth century was as much a national story as a local one. * North Carolina Historical Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003ePreface: RTP Donuts\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction: From Textiles and Tobacco to the City of Ideas\u003cbr\u003e1. Imagining the Triangle: The Unlikely Origins of the Creative City in the Cold War South\u003cbr\u003e2. “Not a Second Ruhr”: Building a Postindustrial Economy in the 1960s\u003cbr\u003e3. Welcome to Parkwood: Newcomers Find Their Way in the Emerging Triangle\u003cbr\u003eInterlude: Sweet Gums, Traffic Jams, and Cilantro\u003cbr\u003e4. “The Greatest Concentration of PhDs in the Country”: The Idea Economy Comes of Age in the Triangle\u003cbr\u003e5. Cary, SAS, and the Search for the Good Life\u003cbr\u003eInterlude: The Islamic School in Parkwood\u003cbr\u003e6. “We Think a Lot”: The Triangle in the Age of Gentrification\u003cbr\u003eEpilogue: The Figure of the Knowledge Worker\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400324325719,"sku":"9780231184908","price":80.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231184908.jpg?v=1730470390","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/brain-magnet-9780231184908","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}