ROBERT GOLDSTON - New York: Civic Exploitation

New York USA, The Macmillan Co., 1970. First Edition. First Printing, Binding: Boards, Donald Carrick Very Good/Fair. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Hardback The city is so vast and variegated as to elude definition and defy reason. It has been all things to all men, but primarily an exploitation machine to most. Over the centuries corruption has spread like a moral slum, graft like rubbish-littered streets, and private greed like an all-pervasive smog, to smother every attempt at civic reform or improvement. Today the ever-sharpening social and economic tensions between rich and poor, native and immigrant, black and white, threaten New York's very existence. In this Urban Portrait, the authors take their readers behind the aluminum-and-glass facade of New York's proud towers to show the city's past growing into its present, its government, its citizens - reformer, exploiters and the exploited - its plans and hopes and the forces that may prevent their realization. Whether New York can regain control of its enviorment and turn it toward humane rather than exploitive ends may determine not only its own fate, but the fate of urban civilization throughout the world. Illustrations. Wear and tear to D/J.