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This work provides a review of Wirth's life based on available biographical sources including unpublished materials. It focuses on Wirth's social, political, and professional evolution, and depicts his personal development through his scholarship, his social activism, and his commitment to reform. The biography concludes with an assessment of Wirth's intellectual impact on urban sociology and reviews of recent critiques of his works.
The Ghetto traces back to the medieval era the Jewish immigrant colonies that have virtually disappeared from our modern cities--to be replaced by other ghettoes. Analytical as well as historical, Wirth's book lays bare the rich inner life hidden behind the drab exterior of the ghetto. The book describes the significant physical, social, and psychic influences of ghetto life upon the Jews. Wirth demonstrates that the economic life of the modern Jew still reflects the impress of the social isolation of ghetto life; at first self-imposed, later formalized, and finally imposed by others through a variety of extralegal mechanisms.
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This book offers a coherant theoretical introduction to urban sociology. Based on the urban theory of Louis Wirth, it systematically examines Wirth's principal ideas in the contexts of pre-industrial cities, industrial cities and bureaucracies. Morris discusses conditions for the emergence of cities and for industrialization. He relates organisational and ecological accounts of the city and considers the contributions of each. Bureaucracy appears as a peculiarly urban form of organisation: its ecological and social characteristics are examined in an original manner and with considerable insight so as to illustrate and modify the propositions derived from Wirth's theory. The book concludes with a comprehensive evaluation of Wirth and his critics. This book was first published in 1968.