Construction History

The European continent was devastated in the wake of World War II, and the conflict left the Soviet Union and the United States as uncontested superpowers. This ushered in over 45 years of the Cold War, and a political alignment of Western democracies against the Communist Soviet bloc that produced conflicts pitting allies on each sides fighting, even as the American and Soviet militaries never engaged each other.

At the dawn of America's love affair with the automobile, cars and trucks leaving the nation's largest city were unceremoniously dumped out of the western end of the Holland Tunnel onto local roads wending their way through the New Jersey Meadowlands. Jersey City mayor Frank Hague, dictator of the Hudson County political machine and a national political player, was a prime mover behind the building of the country's first "superhighway", designed to connect the hub of New York City to the USA.

How do we draw the lines between "good" and "bad" neighborhoods? How do we know “ghettos”? This book questions the widely held assumption that divisions between urban areas are reflections of varying amounts of crime, deprivation, and other social, cultural, and economic problems. Using Ogden, Utah, as a case study, Pepper Glass argues that urban reputations are “moral frontiers” that uphold and create divides between who is a good and respectable - or a bad and vilified - member of a community.

Did you know that before there were engineers and architects, there were builders who relied on their knowledge of nature and the seasons to create huge infrastructures? And what’s really fascinating is the fact that some these buildings are still standing today! Let’s go the ancient Roman sites to see and feel the buildings our ancestors have built many years ago. Open this book today!