"Robert A. Slayton's Back of the Yards is one of the finest accounts I have ever read on an urban, working-class neighborhood in twentieth-century America. Its focus on family, politics, and worklife is penetrating and its conclusions reinforce an emerging scholarly picture of ordinary people exercising unique forms of power."â€”John Bodnar, author of The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America

Back of the yards: The making of a local democracy

Politics & Social Sciences

SLAYTON, ROBERT A.

Social Sciences

Publisher

Robert A. Slayton's Back of the Yards is one of the finest accounts I have ever read on an urban, working-class neighborhood in twentieth-century America. Its focus on family, politics, and worklife is penetrating and its conclusions reinforce an emerging scholarly picture of ordinary people exercising unique forms of power. -John Bodnar, author of The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America

Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy

History

Americas

University of Chicago Press

Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith

An engaging, lively portrait of the great New York governor chronicles Smith's struggles in state government and the anti-Catholic sentiments that torpedoed his historic bid for the presidency in 1928. 25,000 first printing.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Free Press

Arms Of Destruction: Ranking The World's Best Land Weapons of World War II

Military

Citadel Pr

Blending detailed historical perspective with contemporary survey research, Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton argue that the answers to one of the most pressing problems of our time come from the poor themselves. Their examination of the Skid Row single room occupancy hotel (SRO) reveals how communities formed by low-income single-person households have for decades offered the security, personal autonomy, and privacy for the "old" homeless that the "new" homeless lack. And they show how public urban renewal efforts, which destroyed the bulk of these hotels with the intent to rid the inner city of the Skid Row homeless, actually laid the foundation for today's urban homeless crisis.Focusing on Chicago from 1870 to the present, but including case studies in other cities, Hoch and Slayton analyze how these SRO hotels operated in the past and claim that the term "flop house" really described a wide range of shelter types available to the poor according to their economic conditions. Based on their research, the authors conclude that policies for solving the homeless problem should focus mainly not on the homeless people, but on the institutional actors who benefit directly and indirectly from their predicament. This means changing public policies that encourage the destruction of affordable housing, especially SRO hotels, and implementing preservation, rehabilitation, and new construction policies instead.Charles Hoch is Associate Professor in the School of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Robert A. Slayton is Assistant Professor of History at Chapman College and author of "Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy".

New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel (Conflicts in Urban and Regional Development)

Hoch, Charles

Temple Univ Pr

Franklin Roosevelt is said to have explained Al Smith, and his own New Deal, with these words: "Practically all the things we've done in the federal government are the things Al Smith did as governor of New York." Smith, who ran for president in 1928, not only set the model for FDR, he also taught America that the promise of the country extends to everyone and no one should be left behind. The story of this trailblazer is the story of America in the twentieth century. A child of second-generation immigrants, a boy self-educated on the streets of the nation's largest city, he went on to become the greatest governor in the history of New York; a national leader and symbol to immigrants, Catholics, and the Irish; and in 1928 the first Catholic major-party candidate for president. He was the man who championed safe working conditions in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. He helped build the Empire State Building. Above all, he was a national model, both for his time and for ours. Yet, as Robert Slayton demonstrates in this rich story of an extraordinary man and his times, Al Smith's life etched a conflict still unresolved today. Who is a legitimate American? The question should never be asked, yet we can never seem to put it behind us. In the early years of the twentieth century, the Ku Klux Klan reorganized, not to oppose blacks, but rather against the flood of new immigrants arriving from southern Europe and other less familiar sources. Anti-Catholic hatred was on the rise, mixed up with strong feelings about prohibition and tensions between towns and cities. The conflict reached its apogee when Smith ran for president. Slayton's story of the famous election of 1928, in which Smith lost amid a blizzard of blind bigotry, is chilling reading for Americans of all faiths. Yet Smith's eventual redemption, and the recovery of his deepest values, shines as a triumph of spirit over the greatest of adversity. Even in our corrosively cynical times, the greater vision of Al Smith's life inspires and uplifts us.

Presents a major new interpretation of the Ashcan School of Art, arguing that these artists made the working class city at the turn of the century a subject for beautiful art. Silver Winner for History, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards At the beginning of the twentieth century the Ashcan School of Art blazed onto the art scene, introducing a revolutionary vision of New York City. In contrast to the elite artists who painted the upper class bedecked in finery, in front of magnificent structures, or the progressive reformers who photographed the city as a slum, hopeless and full of despair, the Ashcan School held the unique belief that the industrial working-class city was a fit subject for great art. In Beauty in the City, Robert A. Slayton illustrates how these artists portrayed the working classes with respect and gloried in the drama of the subways and excavation sites, the office towers, and immigrant housing. Their art captured the emerging metropolis in all its facets, with its potent machinery and its class, ethnic, and gender issues. By exposing the realities of this new, modern America through their art―expressed in what they chose to draw, not in how they drew it―they created one of the great American art forms.

Beauty in the City: The Ashcan School (Excelsior Editions)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Excelsior Editions

“For Ivan”: A John Falcon Thriller

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Independently published

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