The Rise of the City, 1878-1898 (Urban Life and Urban Landscape)

Arthur Meier Schlesinger (1888-1965) was one of the most influential historians of the first half of the twentieth century. He encouraged new approaches to the study of history, and he played a founding role in the study of the city in American culture. His classic work, The Rise of the City, was first published in 1933 and was reprinted repeatedly during the next forty years. Beginning in the rural South and West and concluding with the triumph of urban civilization, Schlesinger definitively chronicled the fundamental shift from America as a rural agricultural society to America as an urban industrial center. He further suggested that the cities, not Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier, have shaped our nation's story. Andrea Tuttle Kornbluh has written a new introduction for this edition, placing Schlesinger's achievements in the context of the development of American urban studies.