Our new book, A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century is now available now through the Cambridge Historical Society and the following local bookstores:

• Harvard Book Store
• Harvard Coop
• Globe Corner Bookstore
• Porter Square Books
• Seven Stars Books
• Kate's Mystery Books
  

The Cambridge Historical Society has just published this collection of essays, written by 18 contributors - mostly Cantabrigians - which document the many fascinating aspects of this city's unique social and cultural history during the hundred years just gone by.

Readers will find out:

• how Cambridge came to espouse its special form of government,
• how politicians such as House Speaker Tip O'Neill, Congressman Joseph Kennedy and Mayor Al Vellucci played their parts in the local political drama
• how the tensions between town and gown have influenced civic life
• that actress Faye Dunaway hobnobbed with Harvard professors
• that a number of the houses on Coolidge Hill were moved there.

They will learn about the city's Jewish temples and synagogues and be reminded of how architects such as Le Corbusier, Josep Lluis Sert, and Lois Lilley Howe, changed the city's appearance. They'll admire the contributions Cambridge women made to the city, and hark back to the exciting folk music revival of the 1960s, which brought performers such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan to local coffeehouses.

In the 20th century, Cambridge has been home to some of the country's best known literary lights--poets such as Robert Lowell, E.E. Cummings and Seamus Heaney, the novelist Anne Bernays, the biographer Justin Kaplan and detective story writer Robert Parker. Two very different personal accounts by Suzanne Green and Marian Cannon Schlesinger describe what it is like to grow up in Cambridge. Green's African-American family settled on Worcester Street while Schlesinger grew up in the shadow of Harvard where her father was a professor. Also portrayed are the Cambridge Plant & Garden Club, the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School's newspaper, and the Cambridge Historical Society itself.

Together, these pieces show Cambridge off as the vibrant city it has been and point to its exciting future.

Publication funded by Cambridge Savings Bank

Table of Contents
An Overview: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century
Charles M. Sullivan
The Immigrants of Cambridge, Massachusetts George H. Hanford
The Evolution of Religion in Twentieth-Century Cambridge
Alan Seaburg
Immigrant Jewish Cambridge Arnold Schutzberg
Cambridge Modern, 1930–1970: One Architect’s View David N. Fixler
Lois Lilley Howe: America’s First Woman Architect Larry Nathanson
The Absolute Majority of the Population: Women in Twentieth-Century Cambridge Eva S. Moseley
The Never-Boring Political History of Cambridge in the Twentieth Century Glenn Koocher
One Hundred Years of Activism—Or Was It? Bill Cunningham
Town and Gown in the Twentieth Century O. R. Simha
Cambridge: A Congressional Battleground Michael Kenney
“What’s in a Name?” or “Is This the First Garden Club?”
Annette LaMond
Literary Cambridge: The Passage from the Past Michael Kenney
Looking Backward: Club 47 and the 1960s Folk Revival
in Cambridge Millie Rahn
Coolidge Hill in the Past Century, Francis de Marneffe,
Barbara R. de Marneffe, and Ellen G. Moot
Growing Up on Worcester Street Suzanne R. Green
A Cambridge Memoir Marian Cannon Schlesinger
The Register Forum: A Treasure and a Record Stephen G. Surette
The Landscape History of the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House in the Twentieth Century Karen Forslund Falb
A History of the Cambridge Historical Society George H. Hanford
Presidents of the Cambridge Historical Society, 1905-2005
Officers of the Cambridge Historical Society, 1998-2006

400 pp.
Illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps
Index
Paperback
Price: $20
ISBN: 978-1-878284-00-6