ebooks When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson in History

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One of The Washington Post's "Favorite Books of 2013" A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg; Shanghai; Mumbai; and Dubai. Every month; five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen; these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns; where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land; represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage? In a captivating blend of history and reportage; Daniel Brook travels to a series of major metropolitan hubs that were once themselves instant cities― St. Petersburg; Shanghai; and Mumbai―to watch their “dress rehearsals for the twenty-first century.” Understanding today’s emerging global order; he argues; requires comprehending the West’s profound and conflicted influence on developing-world cities over the centuries.In 1703; Tsar Peter the Great personally oversaw the construction of a new Russian capital; a “window on the West” carefully modeled on Amsterdam; that he believed would wrench Russia into the modern world. In the nineteenth century; Shanghai became the fastest-growing city on earth as it mushroomed into an English-speaking; Western-looking metropolis that just happened to be in the Far East. Meanwhile; Bombay; the cosmopolitan hub of the British Raj; morphed into a tropical London at the hands of its pith-helmeted imperialists.Juxtaposing the stories of the architects and authoritarians; the artists and revolutionaries who seized the reins to transform each of these precociously modern places into avatars of the global future; Brook demonstrates that the drive for modernization was initially conflated with wholesale Westernization. He shows; too; the ambiguous legacy of that emulation―the birth (and rebirth) of Chinese capitalism in Shanghai; the origins of Bollywood in Bombay’s American-style movie palaces; the combustible mix of revolutionary culture and politics that rocked the Russian capital―and how it may be transcended today.A fascinating; vivid look from the past out toward the horizon; A History of Future Cities is both a crucial reminder of globalization’s long march and an inspiring look into the possibilities of our Asian Century. 12 illustrations; 4 maps