OAH 2020 Happy Hour Reads: New in U.S. and Urban History
Hello, and welcome back to the second edition of Happy Hour Reads at the Columbia Virtual OAH Book Exhibit. This evening, we invite you to read excerpts from two brand new Columbia books that would have debuted at OAH.
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Just Like Us: The American Struggle to Understand Foreigners
In Just Like Us: The American Struggle to Understand Foreigners, historian Thomas Borstelmann explores American relations with non-Americans. From the founding exclusion of indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans to the uneasy welcome of waves of immigrants, from republican disavowals of colonialism to Cold War proclamations of freedom, Americans’ ideas of their differences from others have shaped the modern world—and how Americans have viewed foreigners is deeply revealing of their assumptions about themselves. Read chapter 1 now.
How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890–1960
In How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing Markets, historian Paige Glotzer charts the rise of the segregated suburb. Most histories begin this story during the New Deal and the Second World War, when sweeping federal policies hollowed out cities, pushed rapid suburbanization, and created a white homeowner class intent on defending racial barriers. But Paige offers a new understanding of the deeper roots of suburban segregation in the emergence of large-scale suburban development in the 1890s. Focusing on the Roland Park Company as it developed Baltimore’s wealthiest, whitest neighborhoods, she follows the money that financed early segregated suburbs, including the role of transnational capital, mostly British, in the U.S. housing market. Read the introduction now.
