U.S. Steel created Gary, Indiana. The new steel plant and town built on the site in 1906 were at once a triumph of industrial capitalism and a bold experiment in urban planning. Gary became the canvas onto which the American public projected its hopes and fears about modern, industrial society. In its prime, Gary was known as "the magic city," "steel's greatest achievement," and "an industrial utopia"; later it would be called "the very model of urban decay." S. Paul O'Hara traces this stark reversal of fortune and reveals America's changing expectations. He delivers a riveting account of the boom or bust mentality of American industrialism from the turn of the 20th century to the present day.

A century of change in an American industrial utopia

About the Author

S. Paul O'Hara is Assistant Professor of History at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Reviews

Until very recently . . . work probing the cultural dimensions of metropolitan change has been largely absent from the canon of urban and suburban studies. With Gary, the Most American of All American Cities, historian S. Paul O'Hara offers a deeply researched, carefully narrated corrrective that is both insightful and important.

* Technology and Culture *

O'Hara draws on a wonderful array of vignettes and quotes from writers, celebrities, visitors, and the media to illustrate, with good effect, the different views of Gary.

* Business History Review *

O'Hara has produced a highly readable and engaging account appropriate for adoption in courses about twentieth-century American culture and urban history.

* Indiana Magazine of History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253222886
Author S. Paul O'Hara
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 318g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 14mm