Books
Examines how it was possible and what it meant for ordinary working-class Americans to become New Deal Democrats and CIO unionists in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Available at Amazon
Probes how the widespread prosperity expected in postwar America through an economy and culture built around mass consumption left a complex political and social legacy.
Available at Amazon
A widely-used college and advanced-placement United States history textbook known for its presentation of the latest historical analyses in a highly readable style.
Available at Amazon
Recent Articles
“Living History,” Radcliffe Magazine, February 2020.
“How Did We Get Here?” Washington Post, May 31, 2020.
“States Are in Crisis. Why Won’t Trump Help?” New York Times, Op-ed, April 29, 2020.
“How Coffee Ruined A Country,” New York Times Book Review, April 19, 2020.
“Roosevelt Island in New York City: An Answer from the 1970s to How We Can Live Together,” publication of 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2020, forthcoming 2020.
“Place, People, and Power in City Building in Postwar America,” Amerikastudien/American Studies (Journal of the German Association for American Studies), special issue, forthcoming 2020.
“Opinion: New Haven’s Renewal As Seen by Those Who Led It,” New Haven Register, February 15, 2020.
“Learning Lessons from the Urban Renewal Era,” New York History, December 2019.
“Only Washington Can Solve the Nation’s Housing Crisis,” New York Times, Op-ed, July 10, 2019.
“When We Realized the Past Isn’t So Past After All,” part of “What Will History Books Say About 2018? 16 Top Historians Predict the Future,” Politico, December 28, 2018.
“Careers in Counterpoint,” Alan Brinkley: A Life in History, edited by David Greenberg, Moshik Temkin, and Mason Williams (Columbia University Press, 2018).
“Paul Rudolph and the Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal,” Reassessing Rudolph, edited by Timothy M. Rohan (New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2017). (with Brian Goldstein).
“Don’t Forget About Ed Logue,” interview with Lizabeth Cohen by Mark Byrnes, CityLab (online publication of The Atlantic Magazine), March 2017.
“Edward J. Logue,” Affordable Housing in New York: The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City, edited by Nicholas Dagen Bloom & Matthew Gordon Lasner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
“The Future of Work: The Political Work Ahead,” Pacific Standard, October 8, 2015; (with Herrick Chapman)
“Building Government Center: The Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1960-67,” Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston, edited by Mark Pasnik, Michael Kubo, Chris Grimley (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2015).
“Edward J. Logue,” American National Biography Online, edited by Susan Ware (Oxford University Press, 2015).
“Governing at the Tipping Point: Shaping the City’s Role in Economic Development,” Summer in the City: John Lindsay, New York, and the American Dream, edited by Joseph P. Viteritti (Johns Hopkins, 2014) (with Brian Goldstein).
“Liberalism in the Postwar City: Public and Private Power in Urban Renewal,” Making Sense of American Liberalism, edited By Jonathan Bell and Tim Stanley (University of Illinois Press, 2014).
“Re-viewing the Twentieth Century through an American Catholic Lens,” Catholics in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History, edited by R. Scott Appleby and Kathleen Sprows Cummings (Cornell University Press with the Cushwa Center, Notre Dame, 2012).