Children Of The City

At Work and at Play

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of explosive growth for American cities, a time of nascent hopes and apparently limitless possibilities. In Children of the City, David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished—and until now unexamined—primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams.

Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published, Children of the City offers a vibrant portrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young.
© Alex Irklievski
David Nasaw is the author of The Patriarch, selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year and a 2013 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography; Andrew Carnegie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, the recipient of the New-York Historical Society's American History Book Prize, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography; and The Chief, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize for History and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for Nonfiction. He is a past president of the Society of American Historians, and until 2019 he served as the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center. View titles by David Nasaw
Acknowledgements

Preface

1.  The City They Called Home

2.  At Play in the City

3.  Child Labor and Laborers

4.  The Littlest Hustlers

5.  The Newsies

6.  Junkers, Scavengers, and Petty Theives

7.  The “Litter Mothers”

8.  All That Money Could Buy

9.  The Battle for Spending Money

10. The Children and the Child-Savers

11. Working Together

12. Unions and Strikes

13. End of an Era

Epilogue

Appendix:  A Note on Sources: The Newsboy Studies

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

About

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of explosive growth for American cities, a time of nascent hopes and apparently limitless possibilities. In Children of the City, David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished—and until now unexamined—primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams.

Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published, Children of the City offers a vibrant portrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young.

Author

© Alex Irklievski
David Nasaw is the author of The Patriarch, selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year and a 2013 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography; Andrew Carnegie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, the recipient of the New-York Historical Society's American History Book Prize, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography; and The Chief, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize for History and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for Nonfiction. He is a past president of the Society of American Historians, and until 2019 he served as the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center. View titles by David Nasaw

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

1.  The City They Called Home

2.  At Play in the City

3.  Child Labor and Laborers

4.  The Littlest Hustlers

5.  The Newsies

6.  Junkers, Scavengers, and Petty Theives

7.  The “Litter Mothers”

8.  All That Money Could Buy

9.  The Battle for Spending Money

10. The Children and the Child-Savers

11. Working Together

12. Unions and Strikes

13. End of an Era

Epilogue

Appendix:  A Note on Sources: The Newsboy Studies

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

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