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Photographer and sociologist Camilo José Vergara has spent years documenting the decline of the built environment in New York City; Newark and Camden, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Chicago; Gary, Indiana; Detroit; and Los Angeles.
During the Civil War, cities, houses, forests, and soldiers’ bodies were transformed into “dead heaps of ruins,” novel sights in the southern landscape. How did this happen, and why? And what did Americans—northern and southern, black and white, male and female—make of this proliferation of ruins? Ruin Nation is the first book to bring together environmental and cultural histories to consider the evocative power of ruination as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change. Megan Kate Nelson examines the narratives and images that Americans produced as they confronted the war’s destructiveness. Architectural ruins—cities and houses—dominated the stories that soldiers and civilians told about the “savage” behavior of men and the invasions of domestic privacy. The ruins of living things—trees and bodies—also provoked discussion and debate. People who witnessed forests and men being blown apart were plagued by anxieties about the impact of wartime technologies on nature and on individual identities. The obliteration of cities, houses, trees, and men was a shared experience. Nelson shows that this is one of the ironies of the war’s ruination—in a time of the most extreme national divisiveness people found common ground as they considered the war’s costs. And yet, very few of these ruins still exist, suggesting that the destructive practices that dominated the experiences of Americans during the Civil War have been erased from our national consciousness.
When Michael Matthews first visited Detroit, he was grimly fascinated by the place. The sheer scale of the crime and desolation was unlike anything he had seen before. He was hooked, and returned whenever he could. Over dozens of visits, he got to know the people - cops, reporters and gang members as well as ordinary Detroiters trying to live their lives in peace - and formed deep bonds with them, which led him into places and situations no writer has ever seen before. AMERICAN RUIN is the story of Michael's journey into the soul of this broken city, a shocking, violent and heart-breaking portrayal of a modern tragedy. Detroit was once the richest city in America, celebrated around the world for its prolific car production and flourishing music scene - the American Dream come true. Then came its fall. Detroit became the deadliest place in America, with more murders per capita than any other major city in the country. With drugs and guns rife on the streets and its administration riddled with corruption, the city was dying and anyone who could was getting out. AMERICAN RUIN is an explosive portrait of a city trying desperately to get back on its feet and the people prepared to give everything for their home.
Making Steel chronicles the rise and fall of American steel by focusing on the fateful decisions made at the world's once largest steel mill at Sparrows Point, Maryland. Mark Reutter examines the business, production, and daily lives of workers as corporate leaders became more interested in their own security and enrichment than in employees, community, or innovative technology. This edition features 26 pages of photos, an author's preface, and a new chapter on the devastating effects of Bethlehem Steel's bankruptcy titled "The Discarded American Worker."
Brian Vanden Brink is one of America's most sought-after architectural photographers. He is also drawn to the mystery and unexpected beauty found in abandoned architecture. Here Vanden Brink captures and illuminates in stunning black and white images abandoned structures such as mills, bridges, grain elevators, churches, and storefronts-structures that once were important and useful. With text by historic preservation expert Howard Mansfield, this collection of photos grants permanence to places that may soon vanish forever.
The "March to the Sea." It shocked Georgians from Atlanta to Savannah. In the late autumn of 1864, as General William Tecumseh Sherman's troops cut a four-week-long path of terror through Georgia, he accomplished his objective: to destroy civilian morale and with it their support for the Confederate cause. His actions elicited a passionate reaction. Sherman became the ruthless personification of evil, an arch-villain who made war on innocent women, children, and old men. But does the Savannah Campaign deserve the reputation it has been given? And was Sherman truly this brutal? In War and Ruin: William T. Sherman and the Savannah Campaign, Anne J. Bailey examines this event and investigates just how much truth is behind the popular historical notions. Bailey contends that the psychological horror rather than the actual physical damage-which was not as devastating as believed-led to the wilting of Southern morale. This dissolution of resolve helped lead to ultimate Confederate defeat as well as to the development of Sherman's infamous reputation. War and Ruin looks at the "March to the Sea" from its inception in Atlanta to its culmination in Savannah. This is a chronicle of not just the campaign itself, but also a revealing description of how the people of Georgia were affected. War and Ruin brilliantly combines military history and human interest to achieve a convincing portrayal of what really happened in Sherman's epic effort to smash Confederate spirit in Georgia.
Argues that President Barack Obama is a dangerous radical who wants not only big government, but the Europeanization of the United States, and explains how citizens can roll back the liberal establishment and return to fundamental American values.
The Poetry of the Americas provides an expansive history of relations between poets in the US and Latin America over three decades, from the Good Neighbor diplomacy of World War II to 1960s Cold War cultural policy.
This provocative book reveals how Hollywood films reflect our deepest fears and anxieties as a country, often recording our political beliefs and cultural conditions while underscoring the darker side of the American way of life. Long before the war in Iraq and the economic crises of the early 21st century, Hollywood has depicted a grim view of life in the United States, one that belies the prosperity and abundance of the so-called American Dream. While the country emerged from World War II as a world power, collectively our sense of security had been threatened. The result is a cinematic body of work that has America's decline and ruin as a central theme. The author draws from popular films across all genres and six decades to illustrate how the political climate of the times influenced their creation. Projecting the End of the American Dream: Hollywood's Visions of U.S. Decline combines film history, social history, and political history to reveal important themes in the unfolding American narrative. Discussions focus on a wide variety of films, including Rambo, Planet of the Apes, and Easy Rider.
Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies—such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins—brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness. Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.