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Assigned readings

Although published in 1974, The Power Broker is still considered the most important book on city planning and New York City history. Salon calls this Pulizer Prize-winning book "the Bible of the American City." It tells the story of how Robert Moses used power to transform New York City in the 20th Century.

It took Robert Caro seven years to write this 1,300-page book. If not for its length, this would be required reading for any student of New York history. Luckily, the New Yorker magazine excerpted the book in the following four parts, available through the Lee Library's electronic reserve:

 

| Part 1 |  Part 2  |  Part 3  |  Part 4  | 

Dale Cressman, "From Park Row to Times Square: The Dispersal and Contested Identity of an Imagined Journalistic Community," Journalism History 34, 4 (2009).

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Michael Schudson and Danielle Hass, "Edifice Rex," Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2009.

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Dale Cressman, "News in Lights: The Times Square Zipper and Newspaper Signs in an Age of Technological Enthusiasm." Under peer review.

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Adopted textbook for spring: Donald Miller, Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America (2015)

Adopted textbook for spring: Mark Briggs, Journalism Next, 3rd ed (2015)

Adopted textbook for winter semester prep class: Pete Hamill, Downtown: My Manhattan (2005)

Recommended readings

Mason Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York (2014)

Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island (2010)

City Saints: Mormons in the New York Metropolis (2004) Note: I have a few copies to lend or gift.

Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (2000)

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