In publishing news, I got my copy of the Encyclopedia of Urban History today. If you’ve got $300 burning a hole in your pocket and don’t want to get 15 copies of Roll the Bones, you might want to pick it up. Or you could just see if your nearest university library has a copy.
If you do, you can peruse my contribution–an entry on”Gambling” kicking off the “G” section, right after “Fresno, California” but before “Gangs.” Looking at the entry for the frist time, I see that my bibliography references a non-existent book–Uneasy Convictions, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2005. When I wrote this entry back in 2004, it looked like that’s where my next book was headed, but the work that ultimately became Cutting the Wire was instead published by the University of Nevada Press.
I’m just pleased to be included in a work that, according to its own review copy, “Offers both a referential and a reverential approach to produce a work that functions as a research tool and as a commemoration of scholarship.” I have a vague idea of what that means, and it seems an accurate description. If you don’t believe me, check out the blurb:
We are an urban nation and have been so, officially at least, since the early twentieth century. But long before then, our cities played crucial roles in the economic and political development of the nation, as magnets for immigrants from here and abroad, and as centers of culture and innovation. They still do. Yet, the discipline that we call “Urban History” is really a phenomenon of post-World War II scholarship.
Now, after a generation of pathbreaking scholarship that has reoriented and enlightened our perception of the American city, the two volumes of the Encyclopedia of American Urban History offer both a summary and an interpretation of the field. With contributions from leading academics in their fields, this authoritative resource offers an interdisciplinary approach by covering topics from Economics, Geography, Anthropology, Politics, and Sociology.
Yep–great things happen in cities, that’s for sure.