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Frances Fitzgerald, Cities on A Hill (1981) Fitzerald conducts a close study of four different American communities. Castro, a San Francisco homosexual neighborhood, the first in the country, the Liberty Baptist church and Jerry Falwell a fundamentalist, a retirement town in Florida-Sun City, and a new Age community Rancho Rajneesh. Four different worlds that were not in the foreground of American mainstream press, four worlds that nevertheless were to make a strong impact on modern America. The story of each group delivers a bigger social issue of the day. For example, Sun City sheds light on the alienation of the elderly population from society. But below the stories, lies another theme, the tendency of Americans to start anew, to change their lives, to rebuild when something does not work. The New York Times criticized Fitzgerald for reading more like a "four separate reports on four separate subjects¡ªsandwiched between introductory and concluding chapters." It may be so, but the book does not necessarily lose its thunder, for the power is not in the transitions or in the unity but in Fitzgerald's trip into each previously unknown world. The Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Fire in the Lake maintains a detached tone throughout, doing thorough reporting, reading, and observing. "While Fitzgerald bends the evidence to fit her thesis, her report brilliantly succeeds in getting inside the minds of these communities." Publisher's Weekly |
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