American College Town

The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of college towns through which many, if not most, college-educated Americans pass through at some point in their lives. They are, in fact, an archetypal setting for a defining life stage. Yet no one to date has undertaken a large-scale study of the college town in American life. This is odd, given that so many social analysts and academics reside in them, and because most people have an intuitive sense of what the "college town" represents. University of Oklahoma geographer Blake Gumprecht, author of award-winning The Los Angeles Riverprovides the definitive volume on the unique phenomenon that is the American college town.In The American College Town, Gumprecht provides a broad, accessible analysis of college towns ranging from the Northeast to the South to the Midwest to the West. The first part of the book presents an overview that defines the college town, considers its development in historical perspective, and categorizes college towns by type. In the second, more substantial part, Gumprecht devotes nine chapters to what he sees as the key features of college towns: the campus, housing, shopping districts, research parks, town and gown disputes, bohemia, left-liberal politics outside the mainstream, sports, and separation from the main contours of American life. He will do this through detailed investigations of approximately a dozen towns from all regions of the country: Oberlin, OH; Manhattan, KS; Norman, OK; Williamstown, MA; Auburn, AL; Davis, CA; Athens, GA; Newark, DE; Provo, UT; Princeton, NJ; Ithaca, NY; and Ann Arbor, MI. In total, he will be looking at data from 58 college towns. He will close the book on the changing role of the college town in American life, its future, and efforts by such towns to resist unwanted change.Gumprecht, Blake is the author of 'American College Town', published 2007 under ISBN 9780415931809 and ISBN 0415931800.