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Good with their hands : boxers, bluesmen, and other characters from the Rust Belt / Carlo Rotella.
LIBRA E169.04 .R68 2002
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LIBRA - Special E169.04 .R68 2002
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Rotella, Carlo, 1964-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Landscape design.
- Police films.
- Boxing.
- Creative ability.
- Social change.
- Work--Social aspects.
- Deindustrialization--Social aspects.
- Deindustrialization.
- City and town life.
- United States--Social life and customs--1971-.
- United States.
- Manners and customs.
- City and town life--United States--Case studies.
- Deindustrialization--Social aspects--United States--Case studies.
- Work--Social aspects--United States--Case studies.
- Work.
- Social change--United States--Case studies.
- Creative ability--United States--Case studies.
- Boxing--United States--Case studies.
- Blues (Music)--Case studies.
- Blues (Music).
- Police films--United States--Case studies.
- Landscape design--United States--Case studies.
- United States--Social conditions--1980-.
- Local Subjects:
- United States--Social conditions--1980-.
- Genre:
- Case studies.
- Penn Provenance:
- Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)
- Physical Description:
- ix, 269 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Berkeley : University of California Press, [2002]
- Summary:
- This eloquent, streetwise book is a paean to America's Rust Belt and a compelling exploration of four milieus caught up in a great transformation of city life. With loving attention to detail and a fine sense of historical context, Carlo Rotella explores women's boxing in Erie, Pennsylvania; Buddy Guy and the blues scene in Chicago; police work and crime stories in New York City, especially as they converged in the making of the movie The French Connection; and attempts at urban renewal in the classic mill city of Brockton, Massachusetts. The stories he tells dramatize the coming of the postindustrial era in places once defined by their factories, a sweeping set of changes that has remade the form and meaning of American urbanism.
- A native of the Rust Belt whose own life resonates with these stories, Rotella has gone to the home turf of his characters, hanging out in boxing gyms and blues clubs, riding along with cops and moviemakers, discussing the future of Brockton with a visionary artist and a pitbull-fancying janitor who both plan to save the city's soul. These people make culture with their hands, and hands become an expressive metaphor for Rotella as he traces the links between their individual talents and the urban scenes in which they flourish. His writing elegantly connects what happens on the street to the larger story of urban transformation, especially the shift from a way of life that demanded individuals be "good with their hands" to one that depends on the intellectual and social skills fostered by formal education and service work. Strong feelings emerge in this book about what has been lost and gained in the long, slow aging-out of the industrial city. But Rotella's journey through the streets has its ultimate reward in discovering deeprooted instances of what he calls "truth and beauty in the Rust Belt."
- Contents:
- Introduction : truth and beauty in the rust belt
- The culture of the hands
- Too many notes
- Grittiness
- Rocky Marciano's ghost
- Conclusion : getting there.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-258) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0520225627
- OCLC:
- 48493774
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