Charles Abrams (1902-1970) stood at the center of the policies,
problems, and politics surrounding urban planning, housing reform,
and the public and private interests involved in the expansion of
the American state. He uniquely combined in one person the often
divergent roles of "public" and "policy" intellectual. As a "public
intellectual," Abrams's voice reached the American public through
the pages of "The Nation, The New Leader, " and "The New York
Times, " with accessible explanations of civil rights legislation,
mortgage financing, government policies, and urban renewal. As a
"policy intellectual," he helped to create the New York Housing
Authority, lobbied President Kennedy to issue an executive order
barring discrimination in federally subsidized housing projects,
and combated the growing threat of a federally initiated "business
welfare state."
"Housing and the Democratic Ideal" is the only comprehensive
work on Charles Abrams to date. Though structured as a narrative
biography, this book also uses Abrams's experiences as a lens
through which we can better understand the development of American
social policy and state expansion during the twentieth century. In
his left-leaning critique of centrist liberalism, Abrams took aim
at the use of fiscal and monetary policies to achieve social
objectives -- a practice that allowed business interests to
maximize private profits at the expense of public benefits. His
growing concern over racial discrimination prefigured its emergence
as a highly contested aspect of the American state.
A. Scott Henderson not only provides clear insight into Abrams's
role in American policymaking and his individual achievements as a
pioneering civil rights lawyer, scholar, and urban reformer, but
also offers an in-depth analysis of modern state-building and the
government-private sector relations ushered in by the New Deal.
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