Why read A Nation of Neighborhoods?

Book cover of A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America

Book description

Despite the pundits who have written its epitaph and the latter-day refugees who have fled its confines for the half-acre suburban estate, the city neighborhood has endured as an idea central to American culture. In A Nation of Neighborhoods, Benjamin Looker presents us with the city neighborhood as both an…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Nation of Neighborhoods as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Todd Swanstrom

Author

Benjamin Looker shows how an idealized image of neighborhoods animated cultural and political identities from World War II to the Reagan era.

I was particularly fascinated by his treatment of the 1970s when “power to the neighborhoods” was a rallying cry for both the left and the right. Jimmy Carter used neighborhood rhetoric to mobilize urban ethnics in 1976, while Ronald Reagan outdid him in 1980, using the gauzy rhetoric of neighborhood empowerment to mask his lack of support for federal policies to help neighborhoods.

This incredibly well-researched scholarly book is wonderfully written and sparkling with insights.

From Todd's list on The best books about why neighborhoods still matter.