Reviews for A City Divided

The average rating for A City Divided based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-04 00:00:00 Neil Duyck I'm not saying that everyone should read this book. You'd really have to be interested in the subject. I am saying that this is painstakingly researched, honest, and quite readable. And I'm saying that this sort of history is the backbone of American scholarship, the kind of book we cannot do without if we are really to understand America. And it comes from that disappearing institution, the American university press. The University of Missouri press, which produced this legitimately important work of scholarship, has been defunded and shut down by its university. What would we have done without these great scholarly presses? What will we do without them. I learned so much from reading this book. It's research for a novel I'm writing, and because of Sherry Lamb Schirmer, I now have the beginnings of a real understanding of another time and another place. Thank you, U of Missouri Press, for this book. Shame on you U of Missouri, that there will be no more like it.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-04-04 00:00:00 Pascual Anadon A solid academic look at Kansas City's troubled past. This book is more of an overview than I thought it would be (and focuses a lot more on 1900-1920 than on the JC Nichols era), and Schirmer uses perhaps a few too many Kansas City Call stories and anecdotal evidence than I would have preferred, but it was still a good read. I only wish there was something covering 1960-? since that's the era that primarily influenced my neighborhood.