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Throughout America's history, lawyers with a crusading zeal have, through their moral stance, intellectual integrity, and sheer brilliance, made use of the law to fight social injustice. In short biographical chapters, the authors tell the stories of ten of these lawyers. Some are well known: Thurgood Marshall; William Kunstler; Louis Brandeis; Morris Dees; Clarence Darrow; and Ralph Nader. Others are not so well known, but deserve to be. All are fascinating and influential attorneys, and examination of their lives illuminates key issues in American history. An annotated bibliography; a chronology of the person's life and work; and a helpful table detailing their most prominent cases accompany each chapter.
A riveting account of a gruesome triple-homicide at Beekman Place in Depression Era New York, with an intriguing cast of characters including the brilliant but mentally-disturbed sculptor, Robert Irwin.
Examines the key role dissent has played in shaping the United States, focusing on those who, from colonial times to the present, dissented against the ruling paradigm of their time, responding to what they saw as the injustices that prevented them from fully experiencing their vision of America. --Publisher's description.
Mid-20th century America envisioned a wondrous future of comfort, convenience and technological advancement. Popular culture--including World's Fairs, science fiction and advertising--fed high hopes even when war and hardship threatened. American ingenuity and consumer culture promised to deliver flying cars, undersea cities, household robots and space travel. By the 1960s political assassinations, the civil rights and women's movements, the Vietnam War and the "generation gap" eroded that optimism, refocusing attention on the issues of the present. The nation's utopian dream was brief but revealing. Based on a wide range of sources, this book takes a fresh look at America's precipitous fall from futurism to disillusionment.
In Local Government in Early America, Brian P. Janiskee examines the origins of the "town hall meeting" and other iconic political institutions, whose origins lie in our colonial heritage. This work offers an overview of the structure of local politics in the colonial era, a detailed examination of the thoughts of key founders--such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson--on local politics, and some thoughts on the continued role of local institutions as vital elements of the American political system.
This study is an attempt to chronicle and analyse the attitudes of the New York press in connection with the events of the period from 1914 to 1917 relating to American neutrality. It is based primarily on a day to-day study of sixteen daily newspapers in New York City for the period of American non-participation in the First World War. The research involved not only editorial opinion but also news items, feature articles, letters to the editor, book reviews and special commentary. The files of the major New York newspapers of the period naturally constituted the basic sources. In addition to this, use was made of the memoirs, diaries and private papers of editors, publishers and other public figures; the Congressional Record, 1914-1917; Congressional hearings and reports, 1915, 1919, 1936 and 1937; certain British and German materials; books, articles and other secondary sources. The author also drew upon the recollections of New Yorkers active in journalism during the period.
Timing the Future Metropolis—an intellectual history of planning, urbanism, design, and social science—explores the network of postwar institutions, formed amid specters of urban "crisis" and "renewal," that set out to envision the future of the American city. Peter Ekman focuses on one decisive node in the network: the Joint Center for Urban Studies, founded in 1959 by scholars at Harvard and MIT. Through its sprawling programs of "organized research," its manifold connections to universities, foundations, publishers, and policymakers, and its years of consultation on the planning of a new city in Venezuela—Ciudad Guayana—the Joint Center became preoccupied with the question of how to conceptualize the urban future as an object of knowledge. Timing the Future Metropolis ultimately compels a broader reflection on temporality in urban planning, rethinking how we might imagine cities yet to come—and the consequences of deciding not to.
On February 25, 1938, in the early days of the welfare system, the reviled poormaster Harry Barck—wielding power over who would receive public aid—died from a paper spike thrust into his heart. Barck was murdered, the prosecution would assert, by an unemployed mason named Joe Scutellaro. In denying Scutellaro money, Barck had suggested the man's wife prostitute herself on the streets rather than ask the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, for aid. The men scuffled. Scutellaro insisted that Barck fell on his spike; the police claimed he grabbed the spike and stabbed Barck. News of the poormaster's death brought national attention to the plight of ten million unemployed living in desperate circum...
Examines the impact of business improvement districts on the quality of contemporary civic life.
From white-collar executives to mail carriers, public workers meet the needs of the entire nation. Frederick W. Gooding Jr. and Eric S. Yellin edit a collection of new research on this understudied workforce. Part One begins in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century to explore how questions of race, class, and gender shaped public workers, their workplaces, and their place in American democracy. In Part Two, essayists examine race and gender discrimination while revealing the subtle contemporary forms of marginalization that keep Black men and Black and white women underpaid and overlooked for promotion. The historic labor actions detailed in Part Three illuminate how city employee...