Choice Review

A major contribution to interdisciplinary literature on the history of the form and structure of the American city, this book is concerned with the 19th-century crusade to steer the layout and spatial organization of the expanding metropolis away from the confining framework of the cramped early industrial city. Schuyler discusses the alternative conceptions of urban form and culture, and traces the efforts to create a new urban structure to counter the congestion of the high-density inner-city gridiron plan. His survey focuses on the evolution of open-space planning as expressed by urban cemeteries, city parks, the early generations of residential suburbs, and the ``City Beautiful'' movement. Schuyler's book draws together scholarly material from a variety of sources, and is a nice central-city counterpart to Kenneth Jackson's groundbreaking history of American suburbs, Crabgrass Frontier (CH, Jan '86). References, bibliographical essay, index, and the quality of illustrations, photos, printing, and binding are all excellent. Highly recommended for collections on urban history, urban geography, urban planning, urban studies, and urban sociology.-P.O. Muller, University of Miami