 | Church and State in the City Church and State in the City provides the first comprehensive analysis of the city's long debate about the public interest. Historian William Issel explores the complex ways that the San Francisco Catholic Church--and its lay men and women--developed relationships with the local businesses, unions, other community groups, and city government to shape debates about how to define and implement the common good. Issel's deeply researched narrative also sheds new light on the city's socialists, including Communist Party activists--the most important transnational challengers of both capitalism and Catholicism during the twentieth century. Moreover, Church and State in the City is revisionist in challenging the notion that the history of urban politics and policy can best be understood as the unfolding of a progressive, secular modernization of urban political culture. Issel shows how tussles over the public interest in San Francisco were both distinctive to the city and shaped by its American character. In the series Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy , edited by Zane L. Miller, David Stradling, and Larry Bennett William Issel is Professor of History Emeritus at San Francisco State University and Visiting Professor of History at Mills College. He is the author of For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco (Temple) and Social Change in the United States 1945-1983 . He is the coauthor of San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development , and co-editor and contributor to American Labor and the Cold War: Grassroots Politics and Postwar Political Culture. |
