| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4 | The History Cooperative

*Selling the City: Gender, Class, and the California Growth Machine, 1880–1940*. By Lee M.A. Simpson. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. xv + 215 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $49.50.)
Lee Simpson's study of small-city growth in California from 1880–1940 raises a provocative question: to what extent was the women's club movement of the early twentieth century teaching women the art of politics and to what extent was it teaching women the art of capitalism?	1
Selling the City examines the role played by upper- and middle-class women in the rise of second- and third-tier cities, mainly Redlands, Santa Barbara, Oakland, and Riverside. Simpson argues that women's most important contribution to the urban growth machine was the solidification of middle-class identity. "A 'middle-class' identity," she asserts, "had to be created that would appeal to all Americans and would legitimate the dominance of corporate capitalism as both a business system and a social system" (p. 4). She further argues that the "unfettered capitalism of western development" taught women the language of capitalism and freed them from the Victorian social constraints that restricted their public activities (p. 10).	. . .

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