Adrienne Brown, "The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race" (John Hopkins UP, 2017)

New Books in African American Studies · Feb 25, 2019 · 1h 17m

Adrienne Brown joins the New Books Network this week to talk about her fascinating 2017 book, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (John Hopkins University Press, 2017), which was a recent recipient of the Modern Studies Association's First Book prize. Tracing the interconnected histories of the skyscraper and racial thought between the 1880s and the 1930s, Brown provides a sophisticated account of how vertical as well as horizontal expansion within the modern American city helped to shape perceptions and understandings of race and racial difference. Drawing on a rich…