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The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues Of Community In America Reprint Edition

by Alan Ehrenhalt (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 15 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0465041930
ISBN-10: 0465041930
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (August 23, 1996)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0465041930
  • ISBN-13: 978-0465041930
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #751,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA thoughtful, controversial look at community.
By Joe Flood on January 6, 1998
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.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA provocative social history of the 1950s
By saskatoonguy on October 15, 2001
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.
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4.0 out of 5 starsSock hops to Twitter feeds
By John H. Matthews on May 19, 2015
Verified Purchase
The primary thesis of this book seems to be that Americans had a sense of well being in the 1950s and the Baby Boomers are mostly to blame for its absence today.

The belief that the ’50s were an fairly idyllic time is not simply nostalgia by those adults who lived through it. Despite the nuclear and communist threats, corrupt political bosses, lack of privacy, racial injustice, constrictive roles for women and the dictatorial rules to be found just about everywhere one went, most people felt pretty good about life. The optimism that exudes from the media of the day is tangible.

So why was everyone so damn happy? Ehrenhalt believes it was the social codes that were enforced by church, family, school and society at large that made for a more content populace. Authority, in other words, makes [most] people happy.

Say what?

The concept may sound alien to us in 2015 (or in 1995 when this book was published) but it might not be so far-fetched. In one of his stronger arguments, Ehrenhalt says that while there is always a small group of bright and articulate libertarian-minded people who wish to throw off all the chains that bind, most people are not like this. Most people prefer order and a rulebook and get nuts when they don’t have one or when others don’t follow it. The libertarian fallacy is the belief that everyone deep down wants to be like them.

In what sometimes sounds like a cranky old man telling kids to get off his lawn, Ehrenhalt lays the majority of the blame for this lost community at the feet of the Baby Boomers. It was their teeming masses, he says, that were crammed into too-small suburban houses and too-crowded schools.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsAn enlightened look at post-WWII American culture
By Michael Baca on January 17, 2000
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.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe good old days were really good...and pretty bad, too.
By Ethics Bob on February 23, 2011
A provocative look at the 1950s--a time when the streets were safe, the schools were good, the kids were well-behaved, and pepple were moral. Ehrenhalt digs into three Chicago neighborhoods and lets them show us why the good old days were good--and bad. This is on my short list of best books ever.list
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe Loss of Community
By James P. Clarke on June 30, 2016
I just finished re-reading this book. I first read a few years ago. It was worth reading it again. The setting of this book is Chicago but this is not a book about Chicago, it is a book about a way of life – neighborhood life.

I grew up in a New York City neighborhood during this same period. The parallels are similar as I imagine they might be to neighborhood life back then in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh etc.

The Lost City presents a wonderful examination of neighborhood life back then and leaves one with a longing for the sense of community long gone. That being said, I do not believe it will ever be possible to attain it again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsColorful portraits of 1950s communities, but the author's conclusions...

I discovered this fascinating little tome this doing research for a visual arts project that had roots in 1950s Chicago, and found it even more interesting because I recently have... Read more

Published 14 months ago by L. Gelinas
4.0 out of 5 starsGood book

I had to read this for a graduate class and I ended up really liking it. Ehrenhalt does a great job portraying the differences of life in 1950's Chicago and paints such an... Read more

Published on May 20, 2014 by Rachel
4.0 out of 5 starsEnjoyable, quick read

Easy to read. Chicago chapter reads a bit like BOSS in its antagonism toward Daley Sr. Last few pages of the book the most important in terms of correcting a culture and its... Read more

Published on January 28, 2014 by Reviewer
3.0 out of 5 starsOne man's opinion, with a few scattered facts

I enjoyed this book but found it to be infuriating on the quantitative nature of the author's observations and conclusions. Read more

Published on September 4, 2013 by John Powers
4.0 out of 5 starswell written but not scholarly- like a good novel

It is a common cliche that Americans were more orderly, more community-minded, and less individualistic in the 1950s. Read more

Published on June 8, 2010 by Michael Lewyn
1.0 out of 5 starsThe Way We Never Were

Misty water colored memories for an America that never existed by an entirely forgettable writer.

Published on June 10, 2007 by douglas235
3.0 out of 5 starsno title

For a book I started out relishing in, by the end I was most thoroughly disallusioned and thought Ehrenhalt had, perversely, disproved most of his own conclusions. Read more

Published on November 27, 2005 by C. L Wilson
5.0 out of 5 starsA tour de force...

It is not often one encounters a scholarly work that is difficult to put down, but The Lost City is just that. I found this book to be immensely readable. Read more

Published on September 9, 2001 by Patrick R. Thrush

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