| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 104.1

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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 104.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

The Cost of Being Poor

By Sandra Barnes

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 275. Photographs, maps, charts, notes, references, index. $24.95.)

It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history. For historians concerned with urban poverty in twentieth-century America, sociology has more often and more reliably filled that role, from the Chicago School studies of the 1920s and beyond, to Kenneth Clark's social psychological profile of the urban ghetto in the 1960s, to William Julius Wilson's examination of the ruinous impact of de-industrialization in the 1980s. Aside from the prescriptive role social science can play in understanding contemporary problems, this historical function is also a vital one, because the dearth of conventional primary sources often makes the experiences of the poor particularly fleeting.

Sandra L. Barnes, associate professor of sociology at Purdue University, has produced a compelling study in this same tradition, focusing on one of the most devastated of de-industrialized midwestern cities, Gary, Indiana. From the first, Gary was tied to the economic fortunes of heavy industry, born of U.S. Steel's desire to create a midwestern outpost and named for the corporation's chairman. As historian Jon Teaford has recounted, the city was promoted as the "eighth wonder of the world" and referred to in 1909 by Putnam's Magazine as "the magic city." Barnes provides some historical background to the tragedy of Gary's decline, but more historical context, including some discussion of whether the urban renewal programs of the post-World War II era had any impact on the then-youthful city, would be helpful.

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