The Nation and its City: Politics, “Corruption,” and Progress in Washington, D. C., 1861–1902 by Alan Lessoff (review)

Book Reviews 181 very exhaustive scholarship regarding Sophia's and Nathaniel's letters. We are better off overlooking the book's shortcomings and concentrating on its very valuable contribution to our knowledge of domestic ideology and the practical aspects of middle-class living in mid-nineteenth-century America. As a case study of true womanhood, Herbert further illuminates the kinds of expectations and restraints women endured, and how devastating these restrictions could be. With regard to the self-made man, the book demonstrates the precariousness of the ideal itself, and its oxymoronic dependence upon the "redeeming 11 qualities of the women it subdued. GeofTH. ]ohnson DePaul University Alan Lesso ff. The Nation and its City: Politics, "Corruption," and Progressin Washington, D. C., 1861-1902. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 337 and illustrations. I suspect that this book will find a ready audience among American urban historians and a place on their course syllabi, but it deserves a much wider audience. Author Alan Lessoff sets out to explain the politics and the development of urban policy which guided the creation of more modern Washington, D. C., and he uses this story as the basis for some intriguing speculations about American polity. He seeks to explain why the cohort of politicians and "civic-commercial" leaders, who spearheaded municipal improvements in Washington during the last half of the nineteenth century, failed to create "the concentrated responsibility and the sense of interdependence necessary for stable urban development" (272). At the heart of this study lies a sense of disappointment about the deterioration of American cities in the 1980s, a disappointment that has spurred Lessoff to ask a remarkable question. "I wondered if there was not a tendency deeply rooted m our history, governmental structure, and political culture,1' he asks, "to place obstacles in the way of efforts to pursue 'public' goals in a 'public minded' fashion" (viii). Lesso ff identifies the obstacle as "promotional governance," a concept that he defines as the equation of the interests of the developers and private investors with the public interest. For students of American polity, he claims, 182 Canadian Review of American Studies promotional governance explains the failure of the United States to develop progressive policies in the public interest in most important areas of public policy, including health care, housing, and education. He successfully uses promotional governance as the framework for the unfolding of a complex story, and I believe that other scholars will pursue this hypothesis in studies of modern American public policy and political thought. The story begins in the post-Civil War era and ends with the emergence of "professional" planning at the beginning of the twentieth century. Despite its growth in both population and stature during the Civil War, Washington remained, in the words of The Nation, in 1871, "a struggling, shabby, dirty little third rate Southern town magnificent only in its differences" (25). Several initiatives to improve the appearance of the capital followed. Between 1871 and 1874 Washington was governed as a territory, and alderman Alexander Shepherd and a board of public works promoted an ambitious infrastructure program. Scandals and political infighting led to the end of self-government and, in 1878, to legislation in which Congress mandated an appointed board of commissioners and a commitment to fund half of the city's operating costs. Lessoff carries the story through the 1880s, the apex of the influence of the Army Corp of Engineers, through to the emergence of professional planning during the Progressive Era and the adoption of the McMillan Plan in 1902. The Nt1,tion redirects the history of urban development in the late nineteenth century, away from industrialization as the primary determinant, and towards an understanding of ideas and practises imbedded in the history of cities before industrialization-as well as traditions of planning and implementation unrelated to the transformation of work. In addition, Lessoff insists on seeing the history of planning and particular plans as part of a larger political history, rather than as steps toward the more progressive and enlightened alteration of the urban landscape. At times, however, his focus on the intricate relationships among politicians, commercial and civil leaders, professional planners, engineers...