Reviews for Philadelphia Stories: America's Literature of Race and Freedom

The average rating for Philadelphia Stories: America's Literature of Race and Freedom based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-20 00:00:00 Xxge Xxge I loved this book! It was probably in part because I'm from Chicago, so many of the things Hecht wrote about were familiar to me. He's a wonderful writer-when the editor says that he took journalism and made it more literary, that description was completely correct. For anyone from Chicago, some of the columns reminded me of Mike Royko who wrote for the Tribune when I was growing up (early 1980s). He writes a lot about the faceless crowds of the city and wondering what is going on behind the faces who stare back at him. Many of his columns are the product of his wandering the streets of Chicago late at night. While Hecht writes about the 1920s, and clearly the population was dealing with the aftermath of the first world war, what is sobering is how some things about people in cities haven't changed. The disconnect, the isolation, the search for companionship in bars (speak-easys back then), getting caught in the justice system, the cycle of poverty that is hard to break. Even the bombardment with advertising is still here, albeit on the internet. I hope we can find a place for journalism like this in the age of the internet. Blogs aren't the same.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-12-28 00:00:00 Jeremy Brown I'm pulling the plug: this book has been on my "currently reading" shelf for almost 3 years, and I've decided I'm never going to finish it. Nevertheless, I can honestly select "I liked it" as a rating. This collection of Hecht's newspaper sketches of everyday life in interwar Chicago is highly readable and amusing in exactly the sardonic way one would expect from the (co-) author of The Front Page or Hecht's many, many Hollywood screenplays; that's why I picked it up. The problem is that in this form it's too much of a muchness; I can imagine a Chicago newspaper reader looking forward to the next Hecht piece, but read all at once like this they become monotonous. Of course, it's hard to fault Hecht for that; this was never the way he meant them to be read. I can imagine it's an invaluable resource for Hecht scholars, if there are such folks, but for everyone else a couple of selections will go a long way.