| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Daniel Eli Burnstein. Next to Godliness: Confronting Dirt and Despair in Progressive Era New York City. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2006. Pp. x, 200. $38.00.

In this slim, tightly written book, Daniel Eli Burnstein explores the Progressive-era reform philosophy that linked cleanliness, health, and morality. Using New York City's turn-of-the-century efforts to clean its streets as a case study, Burnstein argues that "progressives fashioned a comprehensive social vision that applied to practically all social problems" (p. 3). Contrary to many recent works concerning middle-class Progressive Era reformers, he makes the case that a seemingly conservative philosophy of uplift through environmental and moral improvement actually served to strengthen the social reform movement and, apparently, appreciably improved the lives of New York's teeming immigrant millions. In Burnstein's depiction, Progressive-era reformers may have had a "tendency toward paternalism and ethnocentrism" (p. 68), but their expansive view of government's obligation to take responsibility for the urban environment, public health, and the morality of an increasingly immigrant population made them admirable citizens.

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