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December 2016 Vol. 54 No. 4

The title of Cowan's book reflects the first half of an oft-used phrase, but the reality he exposes indicates that the second half of the phrase—“but I wouldn’t want to live there”—is equally valid, given the direction convention centers and tourist boards have taken. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis all grew to prominence during the second industrial revolution, only to fall on hard times when the Great Depression, deindustrialization, and Sunbelt migration left these Rust Belt metropolises with abandoned inner cities and shrinking populations gutting the tax base and infrastructure. Each city thought revitalization would come through convention centers and business travelers and later from sports stadiums and leisure tourists. Unfortunately, though both offered limited relief, neither addressed the systemic problems of inferior schools and shrinking economic opportunities for those trapped in inner cities. These “tourist bubbles” insulated visitors, separating them from residents who had neither time nor funds to visit Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, Cincinnati’s Skywalks, or St. Louis’s Gateway Arch. Cowan (history, Slippery Rock Univ.) rightly concludes that real revitalization will attract conventioneers and suburbanites and offer educational and employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged city dwellers.

--D. R. Jamieson, Ashland University

Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.