Customer Reviews

Selling the City: Gender, Class, and the California Growth Machine, 1880-1940

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Simpson provides a basically optimistic view of the "space" in which white, upper class women could operate, during the period in California up to 1940. You can read the book at two levels. Firstly, and simply, as a good backdrop to the growth of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The narrative helps give more flesh to a time of great urban expansion, that is nowadays often cursorily discussed. Since that expansion was in turn dwarfed by the ever greater growth after World War 2.

But at another level, the book shows how while women might not have been able to hold formal reins of power, in practise, they had more leeway. It is this informal exercise of power that is well described. The merit of the book is in showing that the commonly accepted view of women having little power in that time is perhaps oversimplified. The historical scholarship demonstrated by Simpson is impressive and amply rewards the reader's attention.