front cover of Between City and Country
Between City and Country
Brookline, Massachusetts, and the Origins of Suburbia
Ronald Dale Karr
University of Massachusetts Press, 2018
Since 1945, American popular culture has portrayed suburbia as a place with a culture, politics, and economy distinct from cities, towns, and rural areas. In Between City and Country, Ronald Dale Karr examines the evolution of Brookline, Boston's most renowned nineteenth-century suburb, arguing that a distinctively suburban way of life appeared here long before World War II.

Already a fashionable retreat for wealthy Bostonians, Brookline began to suburbanize in the 1840s with the arrival of hundreds of commuter families—and significant numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants drawn by opportunities to work as laborers and servants. In Brookline the poor were segregated but not excluded altogether, as they would be from twentieth-century elite suburbs. A half century later, a distinct suburban way of life developed that combined rural activities with urban pastimes, and a political consensus emerged that sought efficient government and large expenditures on education and public works. Brookline had created the template for the concept of suburbia, not just in wealthy communities but in the less affluent communities of postwar America.
[more]

front cover of Young Brothers Massacre
Young Brothers Massacre
Paul W. Barrett & Mary H. Barrett
University of Missouri Press, 1988

On January 2, 1932, near Springfield, Missouri, ten poorly armed law enforcement officers set out to arrest two local farm boys for auto theft.  A few minutes later, six of the officers lay dead and three were wounded, setting a record that stands to this day for the greatest number of police officers killed in one incident in the history of the United States.  This is the story of how it happened and of the unlikely people whose lives were forever changed.

The two killers, Jennings and Harry Young, were from a peaceful, tiny community named Brookline in central Greene County, Missouri.  The "massacre" itself took place at the quiet orderly farm home of the J. D. Young family.  Paul and Mary Barrett trace the personalities of those involved in the incident, describe the events of the fateful day, and examine the aftermath of the killings, detailing what was called "the greatest man hunt in the history of Texas," which culminated in the brothers' deaths in Houston.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter