Description: An in-depth look at Boston's Prudential Center and what its story reveals about the evolution of the modern American city
Review Quotes:
"A very valuable book, one that will be essential reading for scholars concerned with the twentieth-century city and its architecture."-Richard Longstreth
"More than the story of a single project, Insuring the City is a thoroughly engaging account of the evolving relationships between cities and suburbs, downtowns and midtowns, architecture and business, public policy and private interests, and development politics and visual culture."-Lawrence J. Vale, MIT, author of Architecture, Power, and National Identity
"You don't have to be from Boston to admire Insuring the City. Elihu Rubin returns a long overlooked player-corporate America-to the story of urban renewal and reminds us in particular how crucial insurance companies were to the creation of the postindustrial city. This is a handsome and important book."-Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
"Fascinating. . . . Rubin offers a surprisingly broad reinterpretation of urban renewal in the automobile age . . . treat[ing] corporate decision makers seriously as shapers of the postwar city."-Urban History Association
Honorable Mention in the General Non-Fiction category at the 2012 New England Book Festival
Winner of the 2013 Lewis Mumford Prize from the Society for American City and Regional Planning History