Budapest and New York
Subtitle: studies in metropolitan transformation, 1870-1930
By: edited by Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske.
Contributors: Bender, Thomas.; Schorske, Carl E.; Russell Sage Foundation.
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 400
Subjects: Popular culture -- Budapest (Hungary) -- Congresses.; Popular culture -- New York (State) -- New York -- Congresses.; Budapest (Hungary) -- Civilization.; New York (N.Y.) -- Civilization.
Other titles: Budapest & New York.
Description: Little over a century ago, New York and Budapest were both flourishing cities engaging in spectacular modernization. By 1930 New York had emerged as an innovating cosmopolitan metropolis, while Budapest languished under the conditions that would foster fascism. Budapest and New York explores the increasingly divergent trajectories of these once-similar cities through the perspectives of both American and Hungarian experts in the fields of political, cultural, social, and art history.

Their original essays illuminate key aspects of urban life that most reveal the turn-of-the-century evolution of New York and Budapest: democratic participation, use of public space, neighborhood ethnicity, and culture high and low.

What comes across most strikingly in these essays is New York's cultivation of social and political pluralism, a trend not found in Budapest. Nationalist ideology exerted tremendous pressure on Budapest's ethnic groups to assimilate to a single Hungarian language and culture. In contrast, New York's ethnic diversity was transmitted through a mass culture that celebrated ethnicity while muting distinct ethnic traditions, making them accessible to a national audience.

While Budapest succumbed to the patriotic imperatives of a nation threatened by war, revolution, and fascism, New York, free from such pressures, embraced the variety of its people and transformed its urban ethos into a paradigm for America.

Budapest and New York is the lively story of the making of metropolitan culture in Europe and America, and of the influential relationship between city and nation. In unifying essays, the editors observe comparisons not only between the cities, but in the scholarly outlooks and methodologies of Hungarian and American historians. This volume is a unique urban history.

Begun under the unfavorable conditions of a divided world, it represents a break-through in crosscultural, transnational, and interdisciplinary historical work.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
"The conference that produced this volume was held in Budapest in 1988"--Acknowledgements.
"The Russell Sage Foundation"--T.p. verso.
Spine title: Budapest & New York.