{"product_id":"metropolis-robert-zecker-9780275997120","title":"Metropolis: The American City in Popular Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003eEver since the rise of mass culture, the idea of The City has played a central role in the nation's imagined landscape. While some writers depict the city as a site of pleasure and enjoyment, the thrills provided there are still generally of an illicit nature, and it is this darker strain of urban fiction-one that illuminates many of the larger fears and anxieties of America at large-that this book addresses. From \u003ci\u003eThe Wire\u003c\/i\u003e's Baltimore to Martin Scorsese's New York, from the Newark of Philip Roth and \u003ci\u003eThe Sopranos\u003c\/i\u003e, to Jeffrey Eugenides's Detroit, The City is everywhere, and everywhere proclaiming on the rise and \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAround 1900, writers for Harper's, Century, and other magazines took middle-class Americans on safari through Little Italy and the Jewish Lower East Side. Later, at the dawn of the talkies, one of the most popular genres was the gangster film, through which the city was often portrayed as a powerful force that sent poor souls to their doom. With the urban disturbances of the 1960s, popular culture took another look at the city and decided that from Detroit to Watts to Harlem, the problem had a different face. Blaxploitation classics such as \u003ci\u003eShaft\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eFort Apache the Bronx\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as police and crime films of the '60s and '70s, offered a cinematic exclamation point to the famous \u003ci\u003eDaily News\u003c\/i\u003e headline: Ford to New York: Drop Dead! \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLater filmmakers offered a more nuanced view of the city, with Scorsese and Coppola paying homage to an old neighborhood of wise guys and goodfellas, and Woody Allen offering the city as a home of urban aesthetes. Meanwhile, on television, crime shows (from \u003ci\u003eThe Streets of San Francisco\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eNYPD Blue\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCops\u003c\/i\u003e, and all the \u003ci\u003eCSI\u003c\/i\u003e programs) have for decades rooted their separate identities in the crime-ridden city itself. Yesterday's foreign threat to the body politic is today's jaded suburbanite, and this work also considers the current development of the cyber-city where urban exiles use their computers to re-imagine the cities of their youth as safe, warm places where we never locked our doors. The City continues to thrill and repulse, and even the Internet once again reduces the mean streets to a titillating story arc.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Robert Zecker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 027599712X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780275997120\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Praeger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/01\/2007\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 296\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.34lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.55h x 6.58w x 1.10d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReference and Research Bk News\u003c\/i\u003e 05\/01\/2008 pg. 183","brand":"Robert Zecker","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48152954798335,"sku":"9780275997120","price":68.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_b16f6c24-4981-4c36-8770-3ab76b4db0df.jpg?v=1770780317","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/metropolis-robert-zecker-9780275997120","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}