In late 1933 and early 1934, Harry Hopkins, director of the infant Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), dispatched an elite corps of journalists and authors, including Bruce McClure and Lorena Hickok, to obtain a grass-roots portrait of Depression-wracked America. His marching orders to Hickok were "to go out around the country and look this thing over.... Tell me what you see and hear.... All of it." She and her compatriots spent two years in different regions of the country, talking with preachers, teachers, civic leaders, businessmen, and "the small fry John Citizen," monitoring the mood of a nation battered by natural and economic disaster. They found the downside of the American dream: flophouses overflowing with tenants who once had been sturdy middle-class citizens, aid administration offices awash in incompetence and corruption, and, beneath it all, a permanent underclass of the illiterate, the mentally ill, and the aged. Untrained in sociology or economics, the reporters described their impressions in passionate and graphic terms that helped move the Roosevelt administration to implement the work programs of the New Deal. Bauman and Coode reveal another dark side of 1930s America, one that is evident in the words of the writers themselves: racial and class prejudice. Comfortably middle-class, mostly from traditional East Coast backgrounds, Hopkins's reporters reflected prevalent beliefs concerning the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor-beliefs that would influence the scope of such New Deal ventures as the 1935 Social Security Law. Author Marth Gellhorn, repulsed by the pattern of inbreeding and degeneration she observed among the "white trash" families of South Carolina, suggested a two-pronged aid program of education and eugenics. In the Eye of the Great Depression objectively portrays a period of American history that is too often romanticized as a time when a combination of inspired leadership and pioneer resilience pulled the nation through a great test of its mettle.

Before Renaissance examines a half-century epoch during which planners, public officials, and civic leaders engaged in a dialogue about the meaning of planning and its application for improving life in Pittsburgh. Planning emerged from the concerns of progressive reformers and businessmen over the social and physical problems of the city. In the Steel City enlightened planners such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and Frederick Bigger pioneered the practical approach to reordering the chaotic urban-industrial landscape. In the face of obstacles that included the embedded tradition of privatism, rugged topography, inherited built environment, and chronic political fragmentation, they established a tradition of modern planning in Pittsburgh. Over the years a m+lange of other distinguished local and national figures joined in the planning dialogue, among them the park founder Edward Bigelow, political bosses Christopher Magee and William Flinn, mayors George Guthrie and William Magee, industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Howard Heinz, financier Richard King Mellon, and planning luminaries Charles Mulford Robinson, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., Harland Bartholomew, Robert Moses, and Pittsburgh's Frederick Bigger. The famed alliance of Richard King Mellon and Mayor David Lawrence, which heralded the Renaissance, owed a great debt to Pittsburgh's prior planning experience. John Bauman and Edward Muller recount the city's long tradition of public/private partnerships as an important factor in the pursuit of orderly and stable urban growth. Before Renaissance provides insights into the major themes, benchmarks, successes, and limitations that marked the formative days of urban planning. It defines Pittsburgh's key role in the vanguard of the national movement and reveals the individuals and processes that impacted the physical shape and form of a city for generations to come.