Identity and the urban experience : fin-de-siécle Budapest /

Social historian Gyani (Eotvos Lorand Univ.; senior research fellow, Hungarian Academy of Sciences) has published several volumes on related topics; they include Parlor and Kitchen: Housing and Domestic Culture in Budapest, 1870-1940 (CH, May'03, 40-5361). The current book presents the social history of Budapest from 1873, the year of unification of Buda and Pest and establishment of a common organizational structure. The author draws parallels to metropolitan developments in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and New York that all took place around the same time. In part 2, Gyani investigates the relationships between social/economic conditions and individual/group psychological reactions. The influx of the population from the countryside to the city triggered countless individual identity problems. Part 3 describes the sociability of the various classes in the growing new city and gives the underlying causes of the social-political riots. Part 4 addresses the problems of the psyche of urban personality, which includes marriage patterns, intergender relations, acculturation, and mass culture. The author has used wide scholarly resources and is unbiased on politically sensitive questions. The translation is adequate. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Social history collections, upper-division undergraduates and above. T. M. Racz emerita, Eastern Michigan University