City Water, City Life - by Carl Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

Just as the internet has, over past decades, prompted reconsiderations of the nature of human sociability (among other things), the water systems of the nineteenth century represented a new way of both bonding and dividing people, and urban dwellers thought actively about the implications. As Smith moves from Philadelphia to Boston to Chicago, Smithexamines a staggeringly broad range of sources from public health reports to poetry, demonstrating that water delivery was not just a core urban technology it was at the very core of the American imagination. This book will be of great interest to those interested in the history of culture, technology, and the environment, as well as to those who are concerned about rights and sustainability in the cities of today."

Book Synopsis

A city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. It is also an infrastructure of ideas that are a support for the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created the city. In City Water, City Life, celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this concept through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. By examining the place of water in the nineteenth-century consciousness, Smith illuminates how city dwellers perceived themselves during the great age of American urbanization. But City Water, City Life is more than a history of urbanization. It is also a refreshing meditation on water as a necessity, as a resource for commerce and industry, and as an essential-and central-part of how we define our civilization.

Review Quotes

"A well-researched, engaging read. . . . Recommended."-- "Choice"

"This collective examination of three cities allows for a broader understanding of the meanings that American city-dwellers attached to their aqueducts, pipes, pumps, and faucets, and the water that these public works delivered."-- "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

"Elegant and concise."-- "Journal of American History"

"Smith has made an important contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century urban America by uncovering the cultural foundations of one of our most vital infrastructure networks."-- "American Historical Review"

"City Water, City Life is a gem of a book, a tightly focused meditation on the antebellum city's 'infrastructure of ideas.' By masterfully compressing myriad period sources, Carl Smith makes major contributions to our understanding of American society and culture."
--Harold Platt, Loyola University Chicago

"A crucially important new chapter in US urban history. With impeccable research, Carl Smith seamlessly synthesizes nineteenth-century issues of politics, engineering, finance, aesthetics, law, and medicine--all focused on the creation of water systems in three major cities and all coalescing around the idea of the greater good of the public at large. City Water, City Life speaks from history to this contemporary moment when the United States confronts, yet again, the debate over public versus private control of its water."
--Cecelia Tichi, Vanderbilt University

"A fascinating history of the ideas about nature, health, citizenship, and time that informed the construction of some of America's earliest and greatest water systems. By demonstrating that our urban aqueducts are built out of ideas as much as bricks and mortar, Carl Smith ensures that a simple glass of water will never seem so simple again."
--Michael Rawson, author of Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston

"A wonderfully perceptive book that provides new insights into the development and implications of water supply in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Readers will find especially valuable Carl Smith's use of cultural, environmental, and health-related frames to construct an 'infrastructure of ideas' relating to water."
--Joel A. Tarr, Carnegie Mellon University

"What a nuanced treatment of water! In City Water, City Life, Carl Smith breathes new life into our understanding of the impact of water supply through his study of Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. While we know a great deal about the systems themselves and how they were developed, Smith focuses on transcendent qualities of water befitting its central role in our lives. As such, he has expanded the audience who will derive a great deal of satisfaction from this study."
--Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City

About the Author

Carl Smith is the Franklyn Bliss Snyder Professor of English and American Studies and professor of history at Northwestern University. His books include three prize-winning volumes: Chicago and the American Literary Imagination, 1880-1920; Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman; and The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City.