Taking the Train

Joe Austin, assistant professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, is coeditor of Generations of Youth: Youth and Youth Cultures in the 20th Century.

• Prologue 1. A Tale of Two Cities 2. Taking the Trains: The Formation and Structure of "Writing Culture" in the Early 1970s 3. Writing "Graffiti" in the Public Sphere: The Construction of Writing as an Urban Problem 4. Repainting the Trains: The New York School of the 1970s 5. The State of the Subways: The Transit Crisis, the Aesthetics of Fear, and the Second "War on Graffiti" 6. Writing Histories 7. Retaking the Trains 8. The Walls and the World: Writing Culture, 1982-1990 Conclusion: A Spot on the Wall Appendix: Sources from Writers Notes Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

Austin argues that the graffiti epidemic was really a smokescreen for poor civic management, and that graffiti itself was the inevitable result of a whole outpouring of structural social factors. New York Times Book Review Although solidly academic, this book is enlivened by its fascinating topic. Booklist A meticulous history. Booklist Austin's precise, witty, and genial style perfectly meshes with his rigorous research and analysis... This exemplary study makes important contributions to understanding contemporary art, urban sociology, and the culture wars. Publishers Weekly (starred review) Lets the graf writers talk back to the haters, while offering a nuanced reassessment of New York City's graffiti scene. Village Voice Austin does full justice simultaneously to New York as a symbolic, although never more than partially representable, city; to changes in the city's economy which create nationally unusual shifts in the relative distribution of wealth and in the ethnic make-up of poverty...ranges widely and with rich detail, yet always anchored in the central narrative focus. Urban Studies