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A definitive, concise, illustrated history of the "capital of the South" the book Atlanta is a young city, even by American standards. Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans were all bustling before Atlanta was even a settlement. Founded in 1837 as a rail terminus on former Creek and Cherokee land, antebellum Atlanta was more like an Old West frontier town than a white-gloved city of the Old South. At its founding, Atlanta had, according to historian Franklin Garrett, "more saloons than churches, more bawdy houses than banks." But since its beginning, the Phoenix City of the South has gone on to become one of the wealthiest, most diverse, most dynamic cities in the U.S., indeed, since its ascendancy with the 1996 Olympic Games, the world. In Andy Ambrose's Atlanta: An Illustrated History, readers will meet the many political, civic, business, and civil rights leaders who have made Atlanta the economic and cultural capital of the Southeast, among them New South proponent Henry Grady, educator W.E.B. Du Bois, entrepreneur Alonzo Herndon, golfer Bobby Jones, Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell, former Georgia governor and U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and television magnate Ted Turner, as well as the city's first black mayor (Maynard Jackson) and its first woman mayor (Shirley Franklin). While the book celebrates the city's rebirth from the devastation of Sherman's Atlanta Campaign to its economic and cultural preeminence as the "City Too Busy to Hate" beginning in the 1960s, Ambrose tells the story straight and shares the city's shame as he recounts Martin Luther King Jr.'s painful rise to civil rights prominence, the race riot of 1906, and the Leo Frank lynching. The author notes that the Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895, specifically proposed to counteract depression, advertised Atlanta as a transportation and commercial center and the city is today corporate headquarters for CNN, Coca-Cola, UPS, and the Ritz-Carlton Corporation. Atlanta is also a center for higher learning in the Southeast and counts Atlanta University, Emory, and Georgia Tech among its several colleges and universities. While Atlanta's history is one of global reach, its story is also the story of a hometown. Ambrose provides the history and context of the city's historically rich neighborhoods—Ansley Park, Buckhead, Druid Hills, "Sweet Auburn", Summerhill, and Vine City among them—as well as the stories behind beloved landmarks such as the Olmsted Brothers-designed Piedmont Park and Philip Trammel Schutze's and John Portman's famous architecture. This short history, packed with over 200 b&w photographs, combines stellar text with the unique resources of the Atlanta History Center's photographic archives to make this a must-read for all natives, newcomers, and visitors eager to understand this unique town. the author Andy Ambrose is deputy director and chief operating officer of the Atlanta History Center. |
ATLANTA
