City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America

by Gunther Barth

This study explains the parallel development of urbanization and modernization in late nineteenth-century American society, demonstrating how the successful features of big-city life spread across the country and transformed towns all over America.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, College, Urban Studies, American History, Cultural

320 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 1982

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I like this city because it feels like a city" - turn of the century New Yorkers

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many ways this book was a bit of a drag. The actual history covered was fairly straightforward, with minimal innovation on the part of the author in terms of covering any specifically new facts or revelations of the modernist time period and the development of the modern city and its concomitant mindset. But what this book does incredibly well is bring out of the usual facts of this time a special emphasis on specific places as tools of education and cultural acclimatizing for a variety of people groups in the early twentieth century. Showing how cultural spaces and habits cultivate individuals and create identities and citizenships was an interesting move that sort of develops unexpectedly out of what is otherwise a fairly bland and straightforward presentation of the history of the city. One factor worth calling out, though, is the sheer economy of language present in this book: the style is telegraphic and so paradoxically very plainly eloquent, albeit with some tendency towards repetition and the occasionally strange and expansive digression into discussions of European history. All in all this book was kind of a drag, in some ways, but had enough thought behind it and in it to generally become an interesting experience in the actual reading.

[John E · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more. Barth's ideas won the growth and development of an modern urban development were excellent and the aspects he studied in the book were well selected and cogent to his thesis. However, his style and organization within each section left a lot to be desired in carrying forth his arguments. Worth reading though.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned about ways immigrants from abroad and migrants from rural America had to devise new ways of getting along together in the city culture in 19th century America.

[Kaufmak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A littled dated at this point, but still a great summary of the cultural movements of urban America in the later part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.