City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles

City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles - Paperback

$24.95
$24.95
Skip to product information
City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles
  • City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles
City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles - Paperback

City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles - Paperback

by Jerald Podair
$24.95
$24.95

Book Overview

A vivid history of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped transform Los Angeles

When Walter O'Malley moved his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 with plans to construct a new ballpark, he ignited a bitter half-decade dispute over the future of a rapidly changing city. For the first time, City of Dreams tells the full story of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped create modern Los Angeles. In a vivid narrative, Jerald Podair tells how the city was convulsed over whether, where, and how to build the stadium. Eventually, it was built on publicly owned land from which the city had uprooted a Mexican American community, raising questions about the relationship between private profit and "public purpose." Indeed, the battle over Dodger Stadium crystallized issues with profound implications for all American cities. Filled with colorful stories, City of Dreams will fascinate anyone who is interested in the history of the Dodgers, baseball, Los Angeles, and the modern American city.

Back Jacket

"When the Dodgers left Brooklyn, their troubles had just begun. Jerald Podair's account of the Los Angeles end of the story superbly chronicles the fierce collisions that ensued, pitting private power against the public good. The creation of Dodger Stadium also created modern Los Angeles, which makes this book an indispensable contribution to the history of modern urban America."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University

"What is the price of a game? What is it worth to a city and its residents to boast a professional sports franchise? These questions need to be answered--but seldom are--before urban leaders make deals to build stadiums, often with staggering implications for their cities. City of Dreams is required reading for anyone who cares about how our sports obsession affects the urban landscape."--Randy Roberts, coauthor of Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X

"City of Dreams documents the steep social price Los Angeles paid when, fifty years ago, its power elite used the highly subsidized Dodger Stadium to launch the city into modernity. To what ends and to whose benefit, Podair asks? Hard questions, indeed, that other American cities with subsidized stadiums are asking too."--Kevin Starr, University of Southern California

"There's a real need for this book. There is no other go-to source on the story of Dodger Stadium in the history of Los Angeles, a subject that offers a fascinating look at midcentury L.A. Jerald Podair helps us understand a complex story of urban vision, sports, politics, and public-private tug of war, offering a corrective to much folklore, hyperbole, and misinformation."--William Deverell, coauthor of Water and Los Angeles: A Tale of Three Rivers, 1900-1941
ISBN9780691192796
Author Jerald Podair
PublisherPrinceton University Press
GenreHistory and Sports
FormatPaperback
PublishedJuly 2019
LanguageENG- English
Pages384
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

History Nonfiction Sports & Recreation

1% fer Each of the Seven Seas

Every purchase sends 7% of our profits to The Ocean Cleanup. No fine print, no opt-in — just how we sail.

Whoever Ye Be, Welcome Aboard

Queer lit, music, art, philosophy, fiction — stories for every kind of soul. Come as ye are, matey.

More by Jerald Podair

Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy

Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy - Paperback

Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy - Paperback

By Thomas M. Nelson and Jerald Podair

About Jerald Podair

Nelson has served in elective office for twenty years and is a seasoned campaigner having run for U.S. House of Representatives (2016) and U.S. Senate (2022). His unique political experience yields important insights into his writing. Along with thoroughly researched subjects and effective use of vibrant, engrossing prose, his books are accessible to a wide audience. Jerald Podair is professor of history and the Robert S. French Professor of American Studies Emeritus at Lawrence University. He is the author of The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis, a finalist for the Organization of American Historians' Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for best book on the struggle for civil rights in the United States and honorable mention for the Urban History Association Award for best book on North American urban history. His City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles won the Harold and Dorothy Seymour Medal of the Society for American Baseball Research for best book on the history of baseball and was a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. His other books include The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States (coeditor); Republican Populist: Spiro Agnew and the Origins of Donald Trump's America; American Conversations: From the Centennial through the Millennium; The Struggle for Equality: Essays on Sectional Conflict, the Civil War, and the Long Reconstruction (coeditor); and Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer. A two-time winner of Lawrence University's Award for Excellence in Scholarship, he is the recipient of the Society of American Historians' Allan Nevins Prize for "literary distinction in the writing of history" and an elected fellow of the New York Academy of History. He was also a member of the Wisconsin Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. His work has been published in the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, Time, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Commentary, American Heritage, and History Today.

You may also like