Product Description

For visitors and recent arrivals, Atlantis Rising, will serve as the essential primer on the ins and outs of the South's capital city. For natives, the book offers up a rich menu of surprising new facts and fresh insights about their own hometown.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #810814 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 290 pages

From Library Journal
Allen, who spelled out the Coca Cola company's recipe for success in Secret Formula (LJ 8/94), here provides a fascinating account of Atlanta's social, political, and economic history over the last 50 years. Allen's behind-the-scenes glimpse into the negotiations that bought the Olympics to Atlanta is merely the icing on the cake. Regional and large collections should consider.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Poingant, insightful, and inspiring
As a native Atlantan who is fully aware of the city's rich history, Frederick Allen's book opned my eyes to the breakneack, full throttle, tight-rope-walking nature of her growth. The book describes in entratining but expert fashion the chain of events that brought Atlanta into the international spotlight so quickly and so successfully. The relationships among Atlanta's decision makers and the backroom deals that shaped the city are fascinating and engaging as put forth by Allen.

This is a great book for anyone interested in Atlanta and how it became what it is at the end of the twentieth century.

fine reporting
A good, somewhat objective guide to the history of Atlanta over the last 50 years, the sort of book that describes every mayoral election in detail. More boosterish about Atlanta than I would have been, perhaps because of the timing (i.e. right before the Olympics). Not nearly as much analysis as reporting, and not as much discussion of Atlanta's failures (e.g. why do Atlantans drive 34 miles a day? Why is Atlanta's crime rate after 10 years of decline as high as New York's in the bad old days of the early 90s?). But there are plenty of books on Atlanta that supply a more critical perspective (e.g. Bullard's Sprawl City).

CAPITOL OF THE NEW SOUTH
Atlanta is an amazing success story, this city was on the ropes in the seventies, it was going the way of Memphis, Birmingham, and New Orleans, then, Atlanta's white business elite and it's black majority decided to work together, and Atlanta become the capitol of the new south, rising like a Pheonix from the ashes of racial striff and economic stagnation, with the help of fortune 500,Coca Cola and Delta, and forward thinking mayors like Hartsfeld, Young, and Jackson. The rise of Atlanta is not just a great southern story, it's a great American story, as New Orleans tries to pick up the ashes of a one proud city, it should look to Atlanta, though if history is any indication it won't, that's why half of New Orleans population is in the two most succesful southern cities, Houston and....Atlanta.