Who Rules America?  By G. William Domhoff, University of California at Santa Cruz

Reviews & Commentaries on The Leftmost City

Reviews & articles

Praise from academics

"The Leftmost City is a wonderful contribution to urban political theory as well as a concrete guide for how to exploit new opportunities for moving urban America forward. Without cynicism or romantic illusion, the authors use Santa Cruz to show the possibilities for community groups to exert effective local action against entrenched business interests. Thanks to their keen ethnographic eye and fast-paced narrative style, Santa Cruz becomes a laboratory for understanding how to take and hold power, and for seeing what local power can and cannot do."

— Harvey Molotch, Professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies, New York University; co-author of Urban Fortunes
"The Leftmost City gives the reader lively prose, provocative arguments, and a fresh stream of ideas. Advocates of progressive politics will find this book a rich resource to draw on. Across the political spectrum, all will learn from the extraordinary politics of Santa Cruz, thanks to the lucid and down-to-earth instruction by authors Gendron and Domhoff."

— Clarence N. Stone, Research Professor, George Washington University; Author of Regime Politics
"This is a terrific book that shows how cities can chart a course between self-destruction at the hands of the 'growth at any cost' advocates while maintaining the tax base to provide social services and preserve neighborhoods. It's a lively case study of two decades of progressive government, carefully documented, reads like a novel. And along the way, Gendron and Domhoff provide a theoretical underpinning that suggests how this experience can be repeated elsewhere."

— Pierre Clavel, Professor of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University; Author of The Progressive City
"The Leftmost City provides cogent insights on the opportunities for and persisting barriers to progressive politics at the local level. From a rigorous case study of Santa Cruz and critical analysis of urban political theory, this book offers essential reading to anyone who wants to understand and change the quality of life along with the opportunity structure in the nation's metropolitan areas."

— Gregory D. Squires, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University; co-author of Privileged Places: Race, Residence, and the Structure of Opportunity
"A well-researched and richly detailed empirical case analysis, which adds an important and compelling theoretic contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of power and governance in American cities."

— David Imbroscio, University of Louisville; Coeditor of Theories of Urban Politics

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