The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues Of Community In America [Paperback]

Alan Ehrenhalt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 1996

Millions of Americans yearn for a lost sense of community, for the days when neighbors looked out for one another and families were stable and secure. The 1950s are regarded as the golden age of community, but 1960s rebellion and 1980s nostalgia have blurred our view of what life was really like back then.In The Lost City, Alan Ehrenhalt cuts through the fog, immersing us in the sights, sounds, and rhythms of life in America forty years ago. He takes us down the streets and into the homes, schools, and shops of three neighborhoods in one quintessentially American city: Chicago. In St. Nicholas of Tolentine parish on the Southwest Side, we see how the local Catholic church served as the moral and social center of community life. In Bronzeville, the heart of the black South Side, we meet the civic leaders who offered hope and role models to people hemmed in by poverty and segregation. And in Elmhurst, a commuter suburb bursting with new subdivisions, we witness the culture of middle-class conformity and the ways in which children and adults bent to the rules of the majority culture.Through evocative stories and incisive analysis, Ehrenhalt shows that the glue holding each neighborhood together was an unstated social compact under which people accepted limits in their lives and deferred to authority figures to enforce those limits—a compact destroyed by the baby boomers’ rejection of authority in the 1960s. Since that time, an entire generation has come to believe that personal choice is the most important of life’s values. But Ehrenhalt argues that if we truly wish to balance the demands of modern life with a feeling of community, we have a great deal to learn from the ”limited” life of the 1950s. The Lost City reveals the price we must pay to restore community in our lives today and the values that will make such a restoration possible.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alan Ehrenhalt is the executive editor of Governing magazine. He is also the author of The United States of Ambition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (August 23, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465041930
• ISBN-13: 978-0465041930
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #445,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful, controversial look at community., January 6, 1998

By 

Joe Flood "Author of Murder in Ocean Hall" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues Of Community In America (Paperback)

This is an excellent book that challenges many of the commonly held assumptions about progress. It's almost an elegy to the 1950s, before the Baby Boomers imploded authority, institutions and religious belief. Now these same Boomers curiosly wonder why the streets aren't safe and our popular culture revolves around money and sex. Boomers wanted more individual autonomy and, in the process, they had to destroy the institutions that held communities together--churches, schools, families. Ehrenhalt illustrates his thesis by concentrating on several neighborhoods in Chicago in the 1950s. The history and the real-world stories of the people involved make it very interesting reading. He does a great job (worthy of a novelist) of evoking the character of the time with lots of interesting detail. What's controversial about the book is his belief (contrary to today's requisite belief in empowerment)that most people want rules, regulations, guides, authority. They want a Catholic Church to tell them right from wrong. They want a community that enforces its values. "The Lost City" is an excellent history that will make anyone think about the condition of America in 1990s.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A provocative social history of the 1950s, October 15, 2001

By 

saskatoonguy (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues Of Community In America (Paperback)

Alan Ehrenhalt's premise is a provocative one: People in the 1950s were happy, and they were happy because they accepted authority. The book is a rebuttal to all those who portray the 1950s as the 'dark ages' of US history, and the author argues that even blacks were better off than popularly believed. Ehrenhalt takes us to three Chicago neighborhoods: the Southwest Side with its working-class Catholic population, the suburban community of Elmhurst, and the black ghetto of Bronzeville. In each, he shows that people in the 1950s were content with their lives, and in many ways were better off than they are now. Even Chicago's black ghetto had a multitude of black-owned businesses and black social organizations, which have since vanished, replaced by nothing but vacant lots and failed housing projects. This is a provocative work of social history that challenges our image of the 1950s, and in addition, it challenges our assumptions about the benefits of free choice and the 'evil' of obedience to authority.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An enlightened look at post-WWII American culture, January 17, 2000

By 

Michael Baca "bossofme" (Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues Of Community In America (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book which stayed with me for days after reading it. The author essentially boils down the cultural differences between pre and post 1960s America to the rise of personal freedom along with its inherent companion, the demise of societal authority. He does so with a mixture of anecdote and fact, ignoring the mainstream stereotypical view of that era, making for an easy and engaging read.

Whether you view that time through the prism of the establishment, the dispossessed, or the child of either, you will find plenty here to mull as we approach the next phase of our evolving American culture. A fun, interesting read.