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A stunning and poignant celebration--in words and photographs--of Miami's legendary South Beach, in all its colorful, art-deco splendor. 94 color photographs.
Typical architectural photography freezes buildings in an ideal moment and rarely captures what photographer Berenice Abbott called the medium's power to depict "how the past jostled the present." In Beyond the Architect's Eye, Mary N. Woods expands on this range of images through a rich analysis that commingles art, amateur, and documentary photography, genres usually not considered architectural but that often take the built environment as their subject. Woods explores how photographers used their built environment to capture the disparate American landscapes prior to World War II, when urban and rural areas grew further apart in the face of skyscrapers, massive industrialization, and profound cultural shifts. Central to this study is the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and Marion Post Wolcott, but Woods weaves a wider narrative that also includes Alice Austen, Gertrude Käsebier, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Morgan and Marvin Smith, Eudora Welty, Samuel Gottscho, Walker Evans, Max Waldman, and others. In such disparate places as New York City, the rural South, and the burgeoning metropolis of Miami, these unconventional architectural photographers observed buildings as deeply connected to their context. Whereas Stieglitz captured New York as the quintessential modern urban landscape in the period, the South was its opposite, a land supposedly frozen in the past. Yet just as this myth of the Old South crystallized in photographs like Johnston's, a New South shaped by popular culture and modern industry arose. Miami embodied both of these visions. In Wolcott's work, agricultural fields where stoop labor persisted were juxtaposed with Art Deco hotels, a popular modernism of the machine age that remade Miami Beach into a miniaturized "Manhattan on the beach." Beyond the Architect's Eye is a groundbreaking study that melds histories of American art, cities, and architecture with visual studies of landscape, photography, and cultural geography.
From the acclaimed bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow comes a remarkably revealing profile of the Miami Beach no one knows–a tale of fabulous excess, thwarted power, and rekindled lives that will take its place among the decade’s best works of social portraiture. Created from a mix of swampland and dredged-up barrier reef, Miami Beach has always been one part drifter-mecca and one part fantasyland, simultaneously a catch basin for con men, fast-talk artists, and shameless self-promoters, and a Shangri-La for sun worshippers and hardcore hedonists. In Miami Beach it’s often said that "if you’re not indicted you’re not invited." But the city’s mad, fascinating complexity resists easy stereotyping. Fool’s Paradise is more than just a present-day profile of a dark Eden. Gaines journeys back into the city’s social and cultural history, unearthing stories of the resort’s past that are every bit as absorbing–and jaw-dropping–as those of its present. The book begins with a snapshot of the city’s current excess (this is, after all, a sun-washed hamlet that boasts, on a per capita basis, more bars–and breast implants–than any other place in America), then plunges into the Beach’s origins, chronicling the audacious rise of such hoteliers as the Fontainebleau’s Ben Novack and the Eden Roc’s Harry Mufson, the sharp-elbowed tactics of Al Capone and Frank Sinatra, and the Mac-10 shooting sprees of the Marielito and Colombian drug lords. From there, the narrative shifts to two wildly eccentric souls who gave their lives to preserving the city’s architectural dazzle and creating its color palette, introduces us to "the Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach," and arrives finally in the modern day, where we meet, among others, a kinky German playboy who once owned a quarter of South Beach and publicly flaunts his sexual escapades; a fabulously successful nightclub promoter whose addictive past seems to have given him a portal into the night world’s id; and a gaggle of young sexy models, dreamers, and schemers on a mission to achieve significance. Evoking the Beach’s surreal blend of flashy Vegas and old Hollywood glamour, as well as its manic desperation and reckless wealth, Gaines persuasively demonstrates that though the Beach is–in the words of its most famous drag queen–"an island of broken toys . . . a place where people get away with things they’d never get away with anyplace else," it casts an irresistible spell.
The late twentieth century has seen a fantastic expansion of personal, sexual, and domestic liberties in the United States. In Not Just Roommates, Elizabeth H. Pleck explores the rise of cohabitation, and the changing social norms that have allowed cohabitation to become the chosen lifestyle of more than fifteen million Americans. Despite this growing social acceptance, Pleck contends that when it comes to the law, cohabitors have been, and continue to be, treated as second-class citizens, subjected to discriminatory laws, limited privacy, a lack of political representation, and little hope for change. Because cohabitation is not a sexual identity, Pleck argues, cohabitors face the legal discrimination of a population with no group identity, no civil rights movement, no legal defense organizations, and, often, no consciousness of being discriminated against. Through in-depth research in written sources and interviews, Pleck shines a light on the emergence of cohabitation in American culture, its complex history, and its unpleasant realities in the present day.
Recognized for its poise and fashion, Miami Beach embodies the best elements of the new American city: cultural diversity, imaginative architecture, and dazzling scenery. In many aspects, Miami Beach is a metropolitan masterpiece, sculpted by the careful hands of visionary entrepreneurs against a magnificent coastal backdrop. The evolution of Miami Beach from a small, uninhabited strip of palmetto scrub and swamp into an internationally-renowned resort is a fascinating tale of human ingenuity, endurance, and foresight. A milestone in the city's development, the year 1920 marked many significant improvement, such as the new County Causeway bridge, and many "firsts" for the expanding hamlet, including the first electric trolley, the first automated telephone system, and its first post office building. Readers of all ages will be thoroughly entertained as they explore their Miami Beach of yesteryear: a time of Prohibition and bootlegging, grand hotels and lavish casinos, budding polo fields and golf courses, and the many distinct personalities that added color and life to this burgeoning town.
The first great modern migration of the Jewish people, from the Old World to America, has been often and expertly chronicled, but until now the second great wave of Jewish migration has been overlooked. After World War II, spurred by a postwar economic boom, American Jews sought new beginnings in the nation's South and West. There, they shaped a new, postwar style of American Judaism for the second half of the twentieth century. Today these sun-soaked, entrepreneurial communities contribute greatly to the American Jewish landscape. In this book, the vibrant Jewish culture of Los Angeles and Miami comes to life through Moore's skillful weaving of individual voices, dreams, and accomplishments.
20 selections, all lovingly translated from the Yiddish, include among others "Progress in Kasrilevke," "Summer Romances," "Birth," "There's No Dead," "Three Widows," "Homesick," "On America," and "A Home Away from Home."
When Rebecca, a well-to-do Cuban-American woman, decides that sheÍd like to revive the old Cuban tradition of the tertulia, or womenÍs get-together, her best friend dashes her hopes, explaining that in todayÍs career-driven world even her friends require a compelling reason to come from all over Miami to casually meet and chat. At last, the ingenious Becky hits upon the idea of a reading group, and the book selected is a historical novel about nineteenth-century Cuba: the saga of an aristocratic dress-manufacturing clan, the Santa Cruz family. The novel is called . . . Playing with Light. Oddly, as they get ever deeper into the story of the Santa Cruzes„especially Tico and Lolo„strange things begin to happen to the reading group. Everyone seems to be . . . sucked in . . . and affected (not necessarily pleasantly) by the saga. (ñWhatÍs for dinner, Mommy?î ñGet a slice of salami out of the refrigerator, dear. CanÍt you see IÍm reading?î) As two worlds, from two different centuries, begin to intertwine in odd ways, and her friends begin to . . . well, to disappear, actually . . . Rebecca canÍt help but wonder what sheÍs gotten herself into. Beatriz Rivera has written an entrancing and wonderfully ambitious novel that places her in the first rank of writers of her generation.
Oakland Rhapsody unites the talents of Richard Nagler, an award-winning photographer, and Ishmael Reed, a respected American novelist, essayist, and poet. Through photography and prose, they focus on Downtown Oakland and create a compelling visual and literary portrait of a major American city as it nears the turn of the century. Downtown Oakland is special. Within a walk of just a few blocks, the visitor can experience the architecture and feel of California in 1895, or 1935, or 1995. Many nationalities have come to call the city home and have contributed to its rich and varied cultural life. All the problems and promise of the American inner city are on view. Through Nagler's images and Reed's words, Oakland, one of the most misunderstood and unappreciated cities in America, emerges as a beautiful and complex subject, a city of charm and challenge, where the history and the future of the state come face-to-face in multicultural harmony.