Description
Book SynopsisA century of change in an American industrial utopia
Trade ReviewUntil very recently . . . work probing the cultural dimensions of metropolitan change has been largely absent from the canon of urban and suburban studies. With Gary, the Most American of All American Cities, historian S. Paul O'Hara offers a deeply researched, carefully narrated corrrective that is both insightful and important.
* Technology and Culture *
O'Hara draws on a wonderful array of vignettes and quotes from writers, celebrities, visitors, and the media to illustrate, with good effect, the different views of Gary.
* Business History Review *
O'Hara has produced a highly readable and engaging account appropriate for adoption in courses about twentieth-century American culture and urban history.
* Indiana Magazine of History *
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: "Built as It Is on Shifting Sand"
Part 1. Gary, the Magic City: Creation Myths
1. "An Industrial Utopia": The Search for Industrial Order
2. "Making a City to Order": U.S. Steel and the Building of an Industrial Center
Part 2. A City Built on Sand: Paradox and Meaning
3. "The Youngest City in the World": The Early Years of an Industrial Frontier
4. "The Gibraltar of the Steel Corporation": Narrative Meaning in a Steel Strike
5. "You're a Damned Liar—It's Utopia": Imagining Industrialism between the Wars
Part 3. The Very Model of Modern Urban Decay: Decline and Fall
6. "Gary Is a Steel City, Young, Lusty, Brawling": Declension Narratives about Gary
7. "Epitaph for a Model City": Race, Deindustrialization, and Dystopia
Conclusion: "In Search of America"
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
