Ghetto

The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea

By: Mitchell Duneier

Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

On March 29, 1516, the city council of Venice issued a decree forcing Jews to live in il geto - a closed quarter named for the copper foundry that once occupied the area. The term stuck.

In this sweeping and original interpretation, Mitchell Duneier traces the idea of the ghetto from its beginnings in the 16th century and its revival by the Nazis to the present. As Duneier shows, we cannot understand the entanglements of race, poverty, and place in America today without recalling the history of the ghetto in Europe, as well as later efforts to understand the problems of the American city.

This is the story of the scholars and activists who tried to achieve that understanding. Their efforts to wrestle with race and poverty in their times cannot be divorced from their individual biographies, which often included direct encounters with prejudice and discrimination in the academy and elsewhere. Using new and forgotten sources, Duneier introduces us to Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake, graduate students whose conception of the South Side of Chicago established a new paradigm for thinking about Northern racism and poverty in the 1940s. We learn how the psychologist Kenneth Clark subsequently linked Harlem's slum conditions with the persistence of black powerlessness in the civil rights era, and we follow the controversy over Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report on the black family. We see how the sociologist William Julius Wilson redefined the debate about urban America as middle-class African Americans increasingly escaped the ghetto and the country retreated from racially specific remedies. And we trace the education reformer Geoffrey Canada's efforts to transform the lives of inner-city children with ambitious interventions, even as other reformers sought to help families escape their neighborhoods altogether.

Ghetto offers a clear-eyed assessment of the thinkers and doers who have shaped American ideas about urban poverty and the ghetto. The result is a valuable new understanding of an age-old concept.

©2016 Mitchell Duneier (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Wonderfully written and informative

I learned a lot. This book is a great read and highly valued. Eye opening

A must-read

I’m biased because I read some of the authors referenced in grad school. Even still, the author does a great job at laying out the concept of the ghetto historically and sociologically. The author gives voices at time to (ideological) minority view points. Be prepared to take notes. This is not a book you simply listen to. It’s a great entry point to other intellectually compelling texts. Great narration and short enough of a read to finish in a day or two.

Deeply insightful

Extremely valuable description that clarifies the history of ghettos and how their creations have impacted society today. Well worth the time investment.

Impressive

A ghetto is thought of as an enclosed area of cities that society places those they perceive as undesirable groups. Duneler tells the history of ghettos, not only the space but the concept of them. In Europe, the undesirables were primarily Jews; in America, it was African Americans.

I was fascinated to learn that Jews were the first to be confined. Duneler tells about Venice in 1516 where Jews were forced by decree into confinement behind high walls of the Ghetto Nuovo, an island named after a copper foundry called Geto. Rome and the rest of Italy followed as the Catholic Church deemed the Jewish faith a threat to Christianity. He tells how Napoleon set out to demolish the Ghettoes of Western Europe.

I found the history and sociology intriguing. I was most interested in Europe because I knew less about it. But Duneler’s book was 90% about the United States treatment of the Blacks and only 10% about Europe.

The book was well written and researched. I found it very easy to read. Duneler has a way of writing that makes complex material easy and a delight to read. I felt this was an important book to read at this time due to all the vitriol currently in this country.

Prentice Onayemi does a good job narrating the book. Onayemi is an author, voice over artist and audiobook narrator.

Amazing

Excellent balance of research interpretation, history, criticism, both from contemporaries and from modern writers, and humanization of researchers.

I read to understand

This book helped me to understand the patterns of history in the US and in the world. It helped me to understand that capitalism and socialism are the same poison with different names.

One Of The Best Books On The Subject

A very thorough and elegantly written account of the formation, and historical methods of maintaining the concept of modern day ghettos, both here in the US and abroad. The author invites readers into the thought provoking socio - political understanding of not only the composition of the ghetto and what that entailed for those who lived there, but brillantly answers the 5W's relating to the subject. A must have in your collection.

Hard Facts and a Good Story

Hard facts about the formation and continuation of the "ghetto". Everyone needs to hear and read for clarity on why this idea turned reality even exists. The author and the narrator were successful in presenting this in a good story so it didnt sound like just a reference or history book.

One of the most important and insightful

One of the most important and insightful books I’ve e er read. I spent my childhood and early adulthood; born in the north east to Southern black parents, wondering why people that look like me all lived in the same place in different degrees of poverty. This book helped me connect the first dots on my journey of understanding the world I was born into. The book is well written and well performed and has no wasted chapters. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in how and why ghettos came to exist and why they still do.

Ghetto

The historical description of ghetto is very interesting. A lot of thought provoking theories on its’ origins and morphing through the centuries.