- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; illustrated edition edition (28 Nov 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691070261
- ISBN-13: 978-0691070261
- Product Dimensions: 25.1 x 16.2 x 3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,287,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
[A]n original and complex explanation for the urban crisis that transformed Oakland, California, from 1945 to 1978. . . . By placing the history of Oakland and its African American community in a new theoretical framework that emphasizes suburban growth, tax revolts, and battles over land, jobs, and political power, Self has challenged historians to reconsider the way that they study postwar black urban communities. -- Albert S. Broussard, Journal of American History
[M]eticulously researched. . . . [A] compelling, complex, and original account of black and, to a lesser extent, white community politics in metropolitan Oakland California from 1945 to 1978. -- Cynthia Horan, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
By placing the history of Oakland and its African American community in a new theoretical framework that emphasizes suburban growth, tax revolts, and battles over land, jobs, and political power, Self has challenged historians to reconsider the way that they study postwar black urban communities. -- Albert S. Broussard, Journal of American History
If you are concerned with the postwar city, race, economics, and politics, get this book and read it. -- Kenneth Durr, American Historical Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
[M]eticulously researched. . . . [A] compelling, complex, and original account of black and, to a lesser extent, white community politics in metropolitan Oakland California from 1945 to 1978. -- Cynthia Horan, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
By placing the history of Oakland and its African American community in a new theoretical framework that emphasizes suburban growth, tax revolts, and battles over land, jobs, and political power, Self has challenged historians to reconsider the way that they study postwar black urban communities. -- Albert S. Broussard, Journal of American History
If you are concerned with the postwar city, race, economics, and politics, get this book and read it. -- Kenneth Durr, American Historical Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
[A]n original and complex explanation for the urban crisis that transformed Oakland, California, from 1945 to 1978... By placing the history of Oakland and its African American community in a new theoretical framework that emphasizes suburban growth, tax revolts, and battles over land, jobs, and political power, Self has challenged historians to reconsider the way that they study postwar black urban communities. -- Albert S. Broussard Journal of American History [M]eticulously researched... [A] compelling, complex, and original account of black and, to a lesser extent, white community politics in metropolitan Oakland California from 1945 to 1978. -- Cynthia Horan Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science By placing the history of Oakland and its African American community in a new theoretical framework that emphasizes suburban growth, tax revolts, and battles over land, jobs, and political power, Self has challenged historians to reconsider the way that they study postwar black urban communities. -- Albert S. Broussard Journal of American History If you are concerned with the postwar city, race, economics, and politics, get this book and read it. -- Kenneth Durr American Historical Review
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
WHEN THE CENTURY'S most violent and bloody war came to a close in 1945, for whom in the United States had victory been secured? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
WHEN THE CENTURY'S most violent and bloody war came to a close in 1945, for whom in the United States had victory been secured? Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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7 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
rigorous and accessible
23 Feb 2004
Format:Hardcover
I read American Babylon after hearing about it on the radio, and came away impressed with the author's ability to make a remarkably complex process - the interplay of surburban development, urban decline, racial politics, and civil rights - accessible to an amateur such as myself. The book lays out a persuasive explanation of why things are they way they are in Oakland, and by (my) extension in many urban areas around the country, including my own hometown of Brooklyn. In doing so it seems to me to be the best sort of historical analysis: rigorous, remarkably detailed, and carefully documented, but useful to the public at large. Highly recommended.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
If You Want to Understand American Cities, Read This Book
8 Feb 2004
Format:Hardcover
Oakland is frequently in the news. Our school board passes a resolution asserting the language rights of African-Americans, and the country explodes in controversy. Our citizens elect a celebrity mayor, and the Wall Street Journal speculates on the reasons. None of these events are understandable without understanding Oakland's history, and Robert Self has done a terrific job of capturing its contours. He lays waste to the common myth that the Civil Rights movement was exclusively a Southern phenomenon, and reports in fascinating detail on Oakland's own Civil Rights movement. Although he reports on its most famous organization, the Black Panthers, he also describes in detail the tenacity and success of other organizations, like the Oakland Black Caucus and the East Bay Democratic Club, which produced changes in the employment and electoral rights of American-Americans.
People who want to change cities should read this book.
An Oakland College Professor
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant history that should be read by political activists
13 Feb 2004
Format:Hardcover
Robert Self's "American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland" deserves the attention of grassroots political activists as much as academics. It is a brilliant analysis of the post-World War Two business strategy for Oakland, California and the boom (and boomerang to Oakland) in housing and jobs elsewhere in Alameda County that resulted. Self shows how the decline of Oakland was the other side of the coin in the creation of new communities in the open spaces nearby. He lays out the class and race contexts of the suburbanization process and shows the consequences for and responses by the labor movement and African Americans to the changes that were wrought. "American Babylon" thus provides, for example, an interesting account of the Black Panther Party. Finally, using this region in northern California as a case study, the book examines the origins of the anti-property tax movement, when the suburbs regime went sour. Since California is still embroiled over the same issues this book addresses -- taxes, urban revitalization, de-industrialization, racial equality, and the political and environmental impacts of suburban growth -- Robert Self's "American Babylon" could not be more timely.
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