Surveys the new practices of advertising, mass distribution of goods, and the birth of the inexpensive mass-audience magazine at the end of the 19th century, and their role in the creation of the American professional-managerial class. Focuses on magazine publishing, careers of key personalities in the publishing world, and the role of fiction in the magazines. For students and general readers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Although the commission government movement is often treated by historians as an element of the reform surge of the Progressive Era, this is the first full-scale study of the origins, spread, and decline of the commission idea. Commission government originated in Galveston, Texas, where business leaders conceived the plan as a temporary measure to speed recovery from the great hurricane of 1900. Other cities in Texas and across the nation soon followed; by 1920, about 500 municipalities had adopted the plan in which elected representatives serve as heads of city departments and, collectively, as a policy-making body. Beginning with Galveston and Houston and Des Moines, Iowa, Bradley Robert Rice presents detailed case studies of the earliest commission cities and shows how the plan was developed and modified to suit each community’s needs. He goes on to chronicle the adoption of the commission plan by other cities across the country that strove for “businesslike efficiency” as a reaction against corruption and machine politics in urban government. Most commission charters included a wide-ranging package of municipal reforms, such as the short ballot, at-large representation, nonpartisanship, civil service, and direct legislation. Yet Rice shows that the commission plan generally offered little in the way of social reform to accompany its reorganization of municipal government. Applying a model of innovation diffusion, the author analyzes how and why the new form of city government spread across Progressive Era America. He also thoroughly explores the relationship between the commission plan and other Progressive Era reforms and reports on the reasons for its decline from both a social and a practical perspective. Progressive Cities is described by Professor Bruce M. Stave, editor of the Journal of Urban History, as “a sound piece of work which should make a useful and worthwhile contribution to the existing scholarship on urban reform and should appeal to an audience which cuts across disciplines: history, political science, urban studies and urban planning.”

Ernest Hemingway, himself one of the giants of American literature, believed this book to be the novel that ‘all modern American literature comes from.’ This is a massive claim when considering the contribution Americans have made in this form throughout the 20th century. Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Pearl Buck, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow – and the list of significant contributors to 20th century literature could go on and on. So what made this book so important and powerful in the development of the modern US novel? Firstly it tackled difficult and relevant issues of its time, in fact of any time. Racism, slavery, abuse, the plight of children are all woven into the fabric of the story. The story raises issues of morality and individual conscience in a natural and not preachy context and presents the dilemmas in situations that most would appreciate and relate to – whether they agreed with the implied conclusions or not. It made the reader think and not just follow the plot. And the voices of the novel and especially the narrator, Huck himself, are authentic, ordinary characters; not literary creations spouting intricate prose but real people speaking a language that readers understood (however offensive some of it might appear today). Add to this Twain’s inimitable style and mordant sense of humour and invention and the sum of the parts becomes a very significant and meaningful whole. The book has sparked controversy ever since publication for being both racist and crude on one hand but also too pro-black and anti-Southern on the other. It has been banned from libraries and school curricula – and subsequently restored; then often banned again depending on the prevailing political and social climate. It continues to cause controversy for both its language and views; but it is a novel that was deliberately written to question the conventional, the establishment view and to pose questions like whether institutionalised practices should just be accepted or sometimes be opposed, even at personal risk or cost? These questions are still relevant today; perhaps more relevant, some might say. The conclusions of the novel might be Mark Twain’s own views but if they can help to stimulate thinking and debate on crucial issues of the day then this is a piece of work that is still worth reading and reflecting on.