Ted Landphair

o many, New York City, that colossus of roads, bridges, skyscrapers, and humanity, is America. From its pastoral beginnings, this city grew to encompass dozy villages and working farms, úrban grandeur and surburban sprawl. Indeed, New York-big, boastful, materialistic, and multicultural since its...

CHANGE? PAROCHIAL OLD PHILADELPHIA? Who would have thought that after three centuries of mostly minding its own business, the hard-working industrial city of narrow streets, grimy factories, and quaint colonial buildings would be transformed almost overnight into one of America's most dynamic and...

FOREWORDChicago, city of immigrants from every nation, the city of the big shoulders, is still "stormy, husky, brawling," as poet Carl Sandburg extolled it, still rolling up its sleeves and getting to work. This boisterous, boastful, teeming, yet remarkably well-scrubbed prairie city is still king...

FOREWORD New England is America's most defined region. There can be lively debate about what constitutes the West or the South or the Mid-West. But there is no doubt about the six historic states—Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont—that make up New...