Overview

Occupy Wall Street did not come from nowhere. It was part of a long history of riot, revolt, uprising, and sometimes even revolution that has shaped New York City. From the earliest European colonization to the present, New Yorkers have been revolting. Hard hitting, revealing, and insightful, Revolting New York tells the story of New York’s evolution through revolution, a story of near-continuous popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) uprising. Richly illustrated with more than ninety historical and contemporary images, historical maps, and maps drawn especially for the book, Revolting New York provides the first comprehensive account of the historical geography of revolt in New York, from the earliest uprisings of the Munsee against the Dutch occupation of Manhattan in the seventeenth century to the Black Lives Matter movement and the unrest of the Trump era. Through this rich narrative, editors Neil Smith and Don Mitchell reveal a continuous, if varied and punctuated, history of rebellion in New York that is as vital as the more standard histories of formal politics, planning, economic growth, and restructuring that largely define our consciousness of New York’s story.

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9780820352824

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Reviews

Revolting New York: How 400 Years of Riot, Rebellion, Uprising, and Revolution Shaped a City offers an extraordinary chronology of the Big Apple's willingness to fight for, well, just about anything, from Munsee Indian attacks on Dutch settlers in 1655 to slave revolts in 1712 to antiabolitionist, flour, and military-draft riots in the mid 1800s to labor and communist unrest and all manner of rabble rousing throughout the last hundred years up to Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and early Trump protests. In all, nearly fifty incidents are profiled in this history of 'New York's evolution through revolution.'--Matt Sutherland Foreword Reviews Urban unrest, observed Alain Locke after the Harlem Riots of 1935, is like 'a revealing flash of lightning' that illuminates larger dynamics. Using this insight as premise and guide, Revolting New York reveals how the entire social history of the city can be narrated through those frequent moments, over the past four centuries, when the tensions of urban life, and the violence of inequality, have boiled over in its streets. This volume's creators, led by two of our foremost urban geographers, show that you can't understand social change or urban history without examining the 'flashpoints' through which the city is fought for--and sometimes even won--by people desirous of a life here that's not revolting at all.--Joshua Jelly-Schapiro coeditor of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas Revolting New York takes you on a whirlwind tour of Indian wars, riots, slave revolts, strikes, protests, and police rampages, from Dutch New Amsterdam to Occupy Wall Street. The sheer number and ferocity of past disorders, and the strangeness of so many of them, will leave you seeing the history of New York as you never did before.--Joshua B. Freeman author of Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II Like a woke dog zapped by an invisible electric barrier whenever it tries to leave the yard, I now recognize the real reason I can't escape this place. Revolting New York is an electrifying compendium of tales of four centuries of the energetic insubordination that is so completely foundational to our character. While the causes and constituencies have varied all over our map, the constant has been taking to the streets, fomenting an unending festival of resistance. I couldn't be prouder than to discover that my homes downtown have been at uprising's very epicenter. You can't scare me, I'm sticking to the Union Square!--Michael Sorkin author of What Goes Up: The Rights and Wrongs of the City

Like a woke dog zapped by an invisible electric barrier whenever it tries to leave the yard, I now recognize the real reason I can’t escape this place. Revolting New York is an electrifying compendium of tales of four centuries of the energetic insubordination that is so completely foundational to our character. While the causes and constituencies have varied all over our map, the constant has been taking to the streets, fomenting an unending festival of resistance. I couldn’t be prouder than to discover that my homes downtown have been at uprising’s very epicenter. You can’t scare me; I’m sticking to the Union Square!""- Michael Sorkin, author of What Goes Up: The Rights and Wrongs of the City ""Revolting New York takes you on a whirlwind tour of Indian wars, riots, slave revolts, strikes, protests, and police rampages, from Dutch New Amsterdam to Occupy Wall Street. The sheer number and ferocity of past disorders, and the strangeness of so many of them, will leave you seeing the history of New York as you never did before.""- Joshua B. Freeman, author of Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II ""Urban unrest, observed Alain Locke after the Harlem Riots of 1935, is like ‘a revealing flash of lightning’ that illuminates larger dynamics. Using this insight as premise and guide, Revolting New York reveals how the entire social history of the city can be narrated through those frequent moments, over the past four centuries, when the tensions of urban life, and the violence of inequality, have boiled over in its streets. This volume’s creators, led by two of our foremost urban geographers, show that you can’t understand social change or urban history without examining the ‘flashpoints’ through which the city is fought for—and sometimes even won—by people desirous of a life here that’s not revolting at all.""- Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, coeditor of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas

Urban unrest, observed Alain Locke after the Harlem Riots of 1935, is like 'a revealing flash of lightning' that illuminates larger dynamics. Using this insight as premise and guide, Revolting New York reveals how the entire social history of the city can be narrated through those frequent moments, over the past four centuries, when the tensions of urban life, and the violence of inequality, have boiled over in its streets. This volume's creators, led by two of our foremost urban geographers, show that you can't understand social change or urban history without examining the 'flashpoints' through which the city is fought for--and sometimes even won--by people desirous of a life here that's not revolting at all.--Joshua Jelly-Schapiro coeditor of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas Revolting New York takes you on a whirlwind tour of Indian wars, riots, slave revolts, strikes, protests, and police rampages, from Dutch New Amsterdam to Occupy Wall Street. The sheer number and ferocity of past disorders, and the strangeness of so many of them, will leave you seeing the history of New York as you never did before.--Joshua B. Freeman author of Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II Like a woke dog zapped by an invisible electric barrier whenever it tries to leave the yard, I now recognize the real reason I can't escape this place. Revolting New York is an electrifying compendium of tales of four centuries of the energetic insubordination that is so completely foundational to our character. While the causes and constituencies have varied all over our map, the constant has been taking to the streets, fomenting an unending festival of resistance. I couldn't be prouder than to discover that my homes downtown have been at uprising's very epicenter. You can't scare me, I'm sticking to the Union Square!--Michael Sorkin author of What Goes Up: The Rights and Wrongs of the City

Author Information

Neil Smith (1954–2012) was Distinguished Professor of Geography and Anthropology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and the author of many books, including Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space (Georgia). Don Mitchell is Distinguished Professor of Geography Emeritus at Syracuse University and Professor of Cultural Geography at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is the author of several books, including They Saved the Crops: Labor, Landscape, and the Struggle over Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era California (Georgia). He was a MacArthur Fellow in 1998.

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