J. Mark Souther, "Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in 'The Best Location in the Nation'" (Temple UP, 2017)

Summary

Like many cities, Cleveland has gone through periods of decline and renewal, yet the process there has followed a process where these periods were not always obvious and often failed because of a lack of cohesiveness among civic leaders, both public and private. In his new book Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in 'The Best Location in the Nation' (Temple University Press, 2017), J. Mark Souther, a professor of history at Cleveland State University, reviews the city's attempts to revitalize from post-World War II into the 1970s. He shows that many of the plans developed had issues that almost doomed them to failure before they were even completed. Mark's book is a great study of a Rust Belt city and its attempts to believe in itself.

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Joel Tscherne

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University and an Associate Faculty member at University of Arizona Global Campus. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.
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