Book Description
State rail programming and planning have matured greatly in the past three decades.State and local governments responded to widespread rail line abandonment in the 1970s by attempting to preserve local rail services and corridors through the adoption of rail freight assistance programs.States also sought to preserve existing passenger rail services by subscribing to Amtrak's 403(b) program.This program allows states to negotiate and contract with Amtrak to supplement existing service and build inter-city rail service along vital transportation corridors.

Prosperity in the mid-1980s changed the nature of state rail programs. States ventured into a variety of activities involving freight and passenger rail programs, grade-crossing safety, right-of-way acquisition and rail banking, high speed rail planning, and intermodal connectivity at seaports, river ports, and truck-rail terminals. Moreover, some states appropriated new financing to establish stable funding sources for the rail mode.The salient features of the 1990s have been the virtual disappearance of federal rail assistance and the tailoring of state rail programs to states' individual needs.

The purpose of this report is to provide an in-depth look at four diverse, yet exemplary, state rail programs: California, Florida, North Carolina, and Washington State.The report examines the evolution, characteristics, management, costs, funding sources and benefits of each program in detail.It also discusses lessons from these state rail programs that might benefit the State of Texas in the event that Texas considers more active participation in state rail programming.Detailed appendixes contain considerable documentation of state statutes, funding histories, program descriptions, feasibility studies, Amtrak 403(b) contracts, and similar source material. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

influential women
Simpson provides a basically optimistic view of the "space" in which white, upper class women could operate, during the period in California up to 1940. You can read the book at two levels. Firstly, and simply, as a good backdrop to the growth of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The narrative helps give more flesh to a time of great urban expansion, that is nowadays often cursorily discussed. Since that expansion was in turn dwarfed by the ever greater growth after World War 2.

But at another level, the book shows how while women might not have been able to hold formal reins of power, in practise, they had more leeway. It is this informal exercise of power that is well described. The merit of the book is in showing that the commonly accepted view of women having little power in that time is perhaps oversimplified. The historical scholarship demonstrated by Simpson is impressive and amply rewards the reader's attention. ... Read more

Book Description
Mary P. Ryan traces the fate of public life and the emergence of ethnic, class, and gender conflict in the nineteenth-century city in this ambitious retelling of a key period of American political and social history. Basing her analysis on three quite different cities--New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco--Ryan illustrates how city spaces were used, understood, and fought over by a dazzling variety of social groups and political forces. She finds that the democratic exuberance America enjoyed in the 1820s and 1840s was irrevocably damaged by the Civil War. Civic life rebounded after the War but was, in Ryan's words, "less public, less democratic, and more visibly scarred by racial bigotry."
Ryan's analysis is played out on three different levels--the spatial, the ceremonial, and the political. As she follows the decline of informal democracy from the age of Jackson to the heyday of industrial capitalism, she finds the roots of America's resilient democratic culture in the vigorous, often belligerent urban conflicts that found expression in the social movements, riots, celebrations, and other events that punctuated daily life in these urban centers. With its insightful comparisons, meticulous research, and graceful narrative, this study illustrates the ways in which American cities of the nineteenth century were as full of cultural differences and as fractured by social and economic changes as any metropolis today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

WHAT!!!!!!!
While this book has terrific content, I did not care for the fact that I had to stop every page and look up words. When I took the GRE I scored in the 96 percentile.I have a strong vocabulary, however, half the time I did not know what Ryan was saying.

This is an interesting book comparing the development of San Francisco, New York, and New Orleans.I would recommend it to anyone studying the 19 Century.You will need a dictionary to read the book, but you will learn a lot. ... Read more

Book Description
The postborder metropolis of Bajalta California stretches from Los Angeles in the north to Tijuana and Mexicali in the south. Immigrants from all over the globe flock to Southern California, while corporations are drawn to the low wage industry of the Mexican border towns, echoing developments in other rapid growth areas such as Phoenix, El Paso, and San Antonio. This incredibly diverse, transnational megacity is giving birth to new cultural and artistic forms as it rapidly evolves into something unique in the world. Postborder City is a genuinely interdisciplinary investigation of the hybrid culture on both sides of the increasingly fluid U. S.-Mexico border, spanning the disciplines of art and art history, urban planning, geography, Latina/o studies, and American studies. ... Read more

Book Description
"Post-Katrina New Orleans hasn't been an easy place to live, it hasn't been an easy place to be in love, it hasn't been an easy place to take care of yourself or see the bright side of things." So reflects Billy Sothern in this riveting and unforgettable insider's chronicle of the epic 2005 disaster and the year that followed. Sothern, a death penalty lawyer who with his wife, photographer Nikki Page, arrived in the Crescent City four years ahead of Katrina, delivers a haunting, personal, and quintessentially American story. Writing with an idealist's passion, a journalist's eye for detail, and a lawyer's attention to injustice, Sothern recounts their struggle to come to terms with the enormity of the apocalyptic scenario they managed to live through. He guides the reader on a journey through post-Katrina New Orleans and an array of indelible images: prisoners abandoned in their cells with waters rising, a longtime New Orleans resident of Middle Eastern descent unfairly imprisoned in the days following the hurricane, trailer-bound New Orleanians struggling to make ends meet but celebrating with abandon during Mardi Gras, Latino construction workers living in their trucks. As a lawyer-activist who has devoted his life to procuring justice for some of society's most disenfranchised citizens, Sothern offers a powerful vision of what Katrina has meant to New Orleans and what it still means to the nation at large. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Love Song and an Eulogy
Sothern, Billy. "Down in New Orleans: Reflections from a Drowned City", University of California Press, 2007.

A Love Song and an Eulogy

Two years ago Katrina took New Orleans by storm and now the stories are coming out. I can't imagine returning to the Crescent City but I do enjoy reading abut what is going on there. In "Down in New Orleans" Billy Sothern tells how hard it is to live in the town post-Katrina. He not only says that it is hard to live there but he also says that it is hard to love there and hard to take care of oneself. He carefully chronicles the coming of the storm as well as the year that followed it.
Sothern and his wife moved to New Orleans four years before Katrina and he writes both a love song and a eulogy to the city. He writes with passion and detail and explains how he and his wife came to deal with what they experienced. Some of the images that he presents make me remember just too well some of my own experiences that I have struggled to forget.
What amazes me the most is the spirit f the people who managed to celebrate Mardi Gras while living in trailers amid the destruction of the city. What is most important is that he looks at not only the vision of what Katrina brought to New Orleans but to the entire nation. He damns everything that went wrong after the stormbut also gives a beautiful tribute to New Orleans. It is hard to believe that two years later, New Orleans is still not back up and running as it should and that the government of the United States as done so little to help the city return to its former self.
This is a book that causes the heart to break and it does so by exposing the inners of the city that was having serous problems long before Katrina. We get to see the dignity and the desire of the survivors to have their city back but Sothern also looks at many urgent issues that do not seem to have any help coming. Sothern shows how the government of the United States has not served the common good and has not protected the poor and the vulnerable.
To forget and forsake New Orleans is a terrible thing and we can almost feel Sothern urging us to return and not just return but do so immediately.
Sothern's emotions are right there on the page and it is hard not to be moved by what he writes. As a former New Orleanian I found myself often moved to tears while reading but I also knew that I would not return to a city that has so many problems and class divisions. I love Little Rock and she has been good to me but that New Orleans inside of me will always be there. I left some of me there but I am not planning to return. I don't think I am ready or even want to deal with it all.
... Read more

Book Description
In 1964 an Urban League survey ranked Los Angeles as the most desirable city for African Americans to live in. In 1965 the city burst into flames during one of the worst race riots in the nation's history. How the city came to such a pass--embodying both the best and worst of what urban America offered black migrants from the South--is the story told for the first time in this history of modern black Los Angeles. A clear-eyed and compelling look at black struggles for equality in L.A.'s neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces from the Great Depression to our day, L.A. City Limits critically refocuses the ongoing debate about the origins of America's racial and urban crisis.
Challenging previous analysts' near-exclusive focus on northern "rust-belt" cities devastated by de-industrialization, Josh Sides asserts that the cities to which black southerners migrated profoundly affected how they fared. He shows how L.A.'s diverse racial composition, dispersive geography, and dynamic postwar economy often created opportunities--and limits--quite different from those encountered by blacks in the urban North. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Well written history of African American LA
_L.A. City Limits_ documents the history of black migration to Southern California, starting from the 1920's. Blacks, fleeing racism in the South and other parts of the US, believed that California would be free of these problems.

Although free from the Jim Crow of the South (people could sit anywhere they wanted to on the bus, or be served in most stores without problems), the three big problems blacks ran into in Southern California were:

1. Employment discrimination. Blacks weren't hired, or if they were, were stuck in the most menial, undesirable jobs. White co-workers, and unions were often more of an obstacle to black employment than the companies themselves.

2. Housing discrimination. With few exceptions, blacks were only allowed to move into South Central LA and Watts. A variety of legal and illegal means were used to keep them out of other parts of Los Angeles, or the suburbs. Even nearby cities like Compton and Lynwood would not see that many blacks until later....

(Related to the above was transportation availability--as the suburbs developed, jobs moved there. People in Watts without a car were at a clear disadvantage, as the bus service was inadequate for reaching these suburbs)

3. in Los Angeles, unlike the South or Midwest,Mexicans competed with blacks for the lower level jobs. The level of discrimination they faced, as compared with that faced by blacks, varied (sometimes much less, sometimes a lot more). Throughout the time scale of the book, the author compares the Mexican experience with the African-American one.

The book provides good coverage of the 1920's and 30's, the war years, and all the way up through the 1965 Watts riots and their aftermath. It tends to lose steam, though, when describing events after the mid-70's.

Should be required reading for every Californian
This book is clear, well-written and very readable. For the first time, I understand the hope my parents must have had when they migrated to Los Angeles in 1957.

Recently, I was speaking to 20-somethings about my mom's yearning to attend high school since here Louisiana hometown did not have a school for her.Slack-jawed, they marveled that someone still alive would have experienced these acts that they thought were in the distant past.

This should be required reading for all Californians.

Excellent text
Well researched, written, accessible, and informative.
Useful to anyone interested in LA history, African-American history, and urban studies.A good book for undergrads, too.

historical intelligence in social storytelling
This is a great book. A special book. Here's why:

Josh Sides has given Los Angeles the kind of racial history that Mike Davis brought to bear on our popular image of the city and the kind of countervailing narrative that Chester Himes might have appreciated. This book's detailed look at Los Angeles shows us how the city's racial texture has changed, but it is also concerned to challenge how lazy we have all become in habitually characterizing racial LA as a city that can be reduced to the Watts Riots, OJ, gang violence, and Rodney King. As Sides tells the story, Los Angeles presents with a genuinely American paradox. Its racial story is a narrative of strife and difficulty, but it is also one of success and hope that rivals any other city's in the United States.

This book is perfectly readable, and it leaves you wondering how we can all think more carefully about what is actually happening in America, beneath easy stereotypes and lazy, stock media representations of race. ... Read more

Book Description
Since its birth in 1781, Los Angeles has come to define both the material and spiritual force of American civilization. The American dream is realized, experienced, and lost in the City of Angels. Unmasking L.A.: Third Worlds and the City, an interdisciplinary collection of essays, dialogues, and photographs, seeks to reveal the third world geographies, cultures, and populations of Los Angeles. It examines the social, political, cultural, and literary climate of the city, bringing together diverse responses to the complexities facing Los Angeles from respected intellectuals, writers, and artists such as Mike Davis, Deepak Chopra, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. By uncovering the forces that marginalize Los Angeles's ever-shifting populations into internal third worlds, the collection unmasks the raw contradictions, the grim paradoxes, and the understated ironies of the global city. ... Read more

Book Description
Discover the unknown California, beyond the glamour and gridlock. ... Read more

Book Description
This intimate study of prostitutes in New York City during the mid-nineteenth century reveals these women in an entirely new light. Unlike traditional studies, Marilynn Wood Hill's account of prostitution's positive attractions, as well as its negative aspects, gives a fresh perspective to this much-discussed occupation.
Using a wealth of primary source material, from tax and court records to brothel guidebooks and personal correspondence, Hill shows the common concerns prostitutes shared with women outside the "profession." As mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives, trapped by circumstances, they sought a way to create a life and work culture for themselves and those they cared about.
By the 1830s prostitution in New York was no longer hidden. Though officially outside the law, it was well integrated into the city's urban life. Hill documents the discrimination and legal harassment prostitutes suffered, and shows how they asserted their rights to protect themselves and their property. Although their occupation was frequently degrading and dangerous, it offered economic and social opportunities for many of its practitioners. Women controlled the prostitution business until about 1870, and during this period female employers and their employees often achieved economic goals not generally available to other working women.
While examining aspects of prostitution that benefited women, Hill's vivid portrayal also makes evident the hardships that prostitutes endured. What emerges is a fully rounded study that will be welcomed by many readers. ... Read more

Book Description
This collection of original essays draws on a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical data to explore the effects of West Indian migration and to develop analytic frameworks to examine it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Half done and one sided analysis of West Indian New York
This book is bad. She neglected some major points.
I am married to a West Indian New Yorker.

One of the major factors that causes distinctions between West Indians and AfricAmericans in New York is rural versus urban. Many African Americans in New York have been there for decades since the Great Migration and have developed typical urban culture. West Indians, most of whom came in the 70s onward are from rural or small town cultures, with the exception of your Kingston rudeboy. Thus the small town values versus the big city badness is also a major difference for West Indian immigrants and African AMericans in New York.

My spouse has said that
"One of the greatest difficulties for me, which tied into the value of education, was the identification of the African American, not by whites who I think West Indians are less concerned about than Foner thinks, as "the N word". This is not a word used as casually in West Indian culture. African Americans, generally, use this word like it is running out of time! For me, I just couldnt stand hanging around someone who was constantly referring to me and themselves as such. The myth that it is a brotherly term, I couldnt buy. Too many times had I heard it used negatively by African Americans saying "Nig*** aint sh**", or "you cant trust a nig**" to buy that excuse! I know many West Indians who for this reason only find it difficult to be around SOME African Americans and not anything else."

Another thing is skin tone and female attraction. For many West Indians, a dark skin girl is attractive, and for those who like light skin, Caramel color is often considered light enough. However, many African American males in New York prefer them very very light or Latina. This causes more West Indian women to reaffirm their relationship with West Indian men.

Another foolish point made was that Whites are more accepting to West Indians than African Americans because of relating to an immigrant experience. Thats bull. Most Americans out of New York have no exposure to West Indians. Also most whites, with the exception of Italians and Jews, are generations removed from ideas of immigration. Immigration for americans is a problem with mexicans and the American desire for a Great Wall to be built in Texas. The truth is that IF their is any more positive response to West Indians it is because prior to the 1960s, where the vast majority of whites had arrived by then, most whites were a part of an oppressive system that made every effort to oppress African Americans of whom a lot are still alive today. They feel less guilt when interacting with West Indians and Africans who were oppressed by other whites and so they dont feel the same role was played. Even the Irish and Italian, who may have had issues with protestant America, played a key role as police brutality enforcers or whatever else against blacks. They were a key figure in the riots against blacks during the civil war, wanting not to fight for nig**** or compete for the same jobs. This is the source of their animosity not a lack of an immigrant identity relationship as the author foolishly suggests is the ingredient that makes them prefer West Indians.

Last but not least is the rasta legacy. Though many West Indians are not necessarily rastafari, they relate to this cultural movement and see it as a binder of the West Indian people, particularly Jamaicans. This has a lot to do with the West Indian identity (take a trip down Nostrand Ave and eastern PKWY where this author has probably never been) and you can see that there is a living culture, that does not exist for the sake of reaction, that continues in New York for the immigrants and their children.

West Indian for Life
I was very excited to read this book because I was told that it was the most comprehensive study to date on West Indian immigrants and their children in New York; I was misinformed.

The primary problem with this so called study is that it reinforces a negative division btw African Americans and West Indians in New York.It asserts, quite aggressively, that West Indians attempt to separate from African Americans solely because they want to distance themselves from the negative stereotypes of African Americans in the eyes of European Americans. She also claims that 2nd generation West Indian identification is more middle class than lower class. WHAT? It also asserts that second generation West Indian identification is futile unless white society recognizes it.

First of all, as a West Indian born in New York and raised in a West Indian community the vast majority of similar people, regardless of class, see themselves the same.The West Indian children I meet who see themselves as African American are ones who only have one parent who is West Indian, a reality she did not touch at all.THere are loads of such mixed children in New York and they are a major factor.

Next, this ridiculous notion that West Indian pride is a reaction to African AMerican negative stereotyping is simply wrong.Why cant West Indians be prideful simply because they are acknowledging their ancestral heritage?Greeks and Italians and white Latinos also heavily populate New York and show similar ethnic pride and it has nothing to do with distancing from white Americans because of negativity--if anything its the other way around.Ethnic pride is just big in New York, not necessarily for the sake of opposition, but because New York allows such ethnic celebration much more than other US cities.

Furthermore, she ignores negative African American responses to West Indians and how that influences what ever existent segregation there is between the two in New York.Claude McKay, a Harlem Renaissance writer originally from Jamaica, makes it clear in his novels that West Indians were existent in New York then and that African Americans termed them "Monkeys".There is a depiction of West Indians as somehow more related to Africans (since most West Indians are ethnically more West African in appearance and due to their foreign accent)and therefore "of the jungled primitive world".I experienced this first hand.Though now dancehall has made West Indian origin more popular it was not so before the mid 90s.

Also, there is a West Indian value of education that SOME African Americans do not have and this separation, such as my parents forcing me to speak academic english versus AfriAmer dialect or even patois slang, made it harder to connect with AfriAmericans as a teenager.

Also African American communities in New York have a greater degree of young single mothers and unemployed young men than the typical two parent homes of West Indians which makes the communities very different in their needs and thus reinforces less need for interaction.

It was also not recognized in this book that West Indian identity was not dependent of White recognition because as she noted, most West Indians in New York socialize among themselves or other people of color.She uses Londons west indian population as an example of how they are less concerned with ethnic identification than in America and how this is evidence of their need to distance themselves from AfriAmericans--thats false.I can say from first hand experience that West Indians in London are also proud however London is far less celebratory of ethnic multiculturalism than New York which discourages West Indian identity and that many of them are in great interaction with white London and thus lose their culture that way. Despite all of this Brixton is as West Indian prideful as Brooklyn! West Indian identity in New York is existent simply because it IS a different culture not because it needs to reaffirm this for white identity.
... Read more

Book Description
When Art Agnos campaigned for mayor of San Francisco in 1987, he articulated and defended the "left" isms--liberalism, environmentalism, and populism. He won.

Seeing Agnos as a defender of slowgrowth vs. progrowth, the city's progressives had high hopes. But to their disappointment, in the wake of the passage of Proposition M--the most restrictive growth control legislation of any large U.S. city--Agnos supported waterfront development and proposals to build a new baseball stadium in China Basin and a large residential and business development in Mission Bay. In 1991 Agnos ran for reelection. He lost.

Left Coast City provides insight into how San Francisco's progressive coalition developed between 1975 and 1991, what stresses emerged to cause splintering within the coalition, and how the coalition fell apart in the 1991 mayoral campaign.

Focusing on San Francisco's turbulent political history, non-conformist traditions, and ethnic and cultural diversity, political scientist Richard DeLeon analyzes the successes and failures of the progressive movement as it topples the business-dominated progrowth regime, imposes stringent controls on growth and development, and achieves political control of city hall.

Although the movement has achieved national recognition as a possible vanguard of social and political change in this country, DeLeon argues that a new progressive regime has not yet emerged to replace the defunct progrowth regime. Having helped to create chaos out of order, progressive leaders now face the task of creating order out of chaos.

"What the city has now is, at best, an antiregime, a transitional political order set up defensively to block the Lazarus-like re-emergence of the old progrowth regime," DeLeon writes. "Such an order cannot last." The key to survival of the progressive movement, he contends, is creation of a progressive urban regime, where public and private entities function together.

This book is part of the Studies in Government and Public Policy series. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Essential in understanding San Francisco Politics
I have read this book and learned about San Francisco politics in a manner that could only be paralleled by an education at San Francisco State University.Highly informative and highly recommended.

A must read for those interested in San Francisco politics
If you are at all interested in the new role of cities in the global economy or San Francisco politics, this is the book to have. The most informative book on San Franicisco politics to date. Theoretically sophisticated and a readable case study at the same time ... Read more

Book Description
Moment of Grace tells the story of the American city in its remarkable heyday. Never before or after the 1950s were downtowns so exciting, neighborhoods so settled, or suburban dwellers so optimistic. Urban culture was at its peak: it was vital, urbane, conformist, and generating rebellion all at once. Capturing the mood of the '50s in superb historical photographs and mining delightfully varied sources--including urban critics, interviews with city residents, novels, songs, magazines, and newspapers--Moment of Grace brings alive the downtowns, the neighborhoods, and the suburbs of the era. A rich historical reflection on a singular decade, the book also portrays the '50s as a critical turning point in American culture and economy. Michael Johns shows us exactly why city life never could or would be the same again.
Giving a vivid sense of the lived experience of the day, Johns explores the '50s in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, writing about fashion (which demanded the highest heels and pointiest breasts in history), nightlife, architecture, literature, business and economic trends, and teenage culture. He tells us what was for sale in the stores, who lived in the neighborhoods, what life was like for women in the brand-new suburbs, and much more. And he confronts difficult issues head-on. What did the loss of city jobs and the simultaneous success of the civil rights movement mean for black neighborhoods? What were the profound consequences of the rise of the suburbs for family life?
In contrast to the vibrant cities of the '50s, the streets of today's downtowns are often empty if not suffused with melancholy. Johns uncovers the seeds of the transformation from the '50s to today, and at the same time, he paints a memorable picture of the American past. ... Read more