In particular, they question whether sprawl was a necessary condition of American industrialization; could the agricultural base that preceded and surrounded the city have survived the onrush of residential real estate speculation with a bit of foresight and public policies that the politically outnumbered farmers could not have secured on their own?

Cabbages and Kings is a 1904 novel made up of interlinked short stories, written by O. Henry and set in a fictitious Central American country called the Republic of Anchuria. It takes its title from the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter", featured in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. In this book, O. Henry coined the term "banana republic". Table of Contents: I. "FOX-IN-THE-MORNING" II. THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE III. SMITH IV. CAUGHT V. CUPID'S EXILE NUMBER TWO VI. THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT VII. MONEY MAZE VIII. THE ADMIRAL IX. THE FLAG PARAMOUNT X. THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM XI. THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE XII. SHOES XIII. SHIPS XIV. MASTERS OF ARTS XV. DICKY XVI. ROUGE ET NOIR XVII. TWO RECALLS XVIII. THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE

Albert, the asparagus whose family has grown in Farmer John's garden for years, and a newcomer, Herman the cabbage, spend the days from spring until time for the fair getting to know each other.

In The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn, Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler tell the story of nineteenth-century Brooklyn's domination by upper- and middle-class Protestants with roots in Puritan New England. This lively history describes the unraveling of the control they wielded as more ethnically diverse groups moved into the "City of Churches" during the twentieth century. Before it became a prime American example of urban ethnic diversity, Brooklyn was a lovely and salubrious "town across the river" from Manhattan, celebrated for its churches and upright suburban living. But challenges to this way of life issued from the sheer growth of the city, from new secular institutions—department stores, theaters, professional baseball—and from the licit and illicit attractions of Coney Island, all of which were at odds with post-Puritan piety and behavior. Despite these developments, the Yankee-Protestant hegemony largely held until the massive influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the twentieth century. As The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn demonstrates, in their churches, synagogues, and other communal institutions, and on their neighborhood streets, the new Brooklynites established the ethnic mosaic that laid the groundwork for the theory of cultural pluralism, giving it a central place within the American Creed.

From the Pilgrims to Disney World, Steinberg offers a bold and exciting new way to understand American history through the lens of nature. 65 halftones. 5 maps.