jaggrrrl

What books do you have on your nightstand and/or what are you currently reading or looking at?

5/6/08 -

Downtown America
A History of the Place and the People Who Made It
Alison Isenberg
Chicago Press

Downtown America offers a dynamic new account of urban commercial life in the twentieth century, transcending the archetypal story of Main Street's rise and fall. In this captivating history full of conflict and unexpected human choices, Alison Isenberg reveals that downtown's trajectory was the contested creation of retailers, developers, bureaucrats, architects, and planners, as well as activists, consumers, civic leaders, real estate appraisers, even postcard artists. Downtown America - it's empty stores, revitalized marketplaces, and romaticized past - will never look the same again.

"America's downtowns, if the daily papers and local chambers of commerce are to be believed, are tottering on the brink of destruction once again . . . Isenberg holds out a ray of hope in Downtown America. Her endlessly fascinating book argues that Main Street has always been an idealized dreamscape,  kind of Shangrila perfect civic bliss that never did quite measure up to its own image." - Karal Ann Marling
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