Customer Reviews

Cincinnati: From River City to Highway Metropolis (OH) (Making of America)

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Cincinnati: From River City to Highway Metropolis is the best comprehensive history of the city that I have read. I was expecting to find the sort of soft, sentimental historical writing common to these airport picture books. I don't know how he snuck this one past the publisher. It is honest and it does not pull any punches. Cincinnati "is a city that peaked more than 150 years ago," Stradling writes in the introduction, and he goes on to explain why, letting the Cincinnati's history, which sometimes glorifies the city, and other times embarrasses it, speak for itself. Short and sweet, the book ends with a subtle plea from the author to the citizens of Cincinnati (and of all American cities), to avoid letting suburbanization rob them of the last physical vestiges of their vital urban history.