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The head counters at the Census Bureau tell us that Atlanta continues to attract new residents. It occurred to me that any newcomer would be interested in Atlanta’s history, if nothing else to find out why there are so many Peachtree Streets.

Actually, Atlanta has a dramatic, exciting and important history, right from the beginning in the 19th century and now into the 21st. As a collector of books about Atlanta — and I read them too — I thought I would offer at least a start on providing a booklist for newcomers (and old-timers).

Let me assert at the start that I will leave out some books that other locals would mention, either because I forgot it or possibly didn’t think much of it. My list does not include “Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell or “A Man in Full” by Tom Wolfe, not because they aren’t worthwhile but they are novels and my list is all nonfiction. I don’t list Anne Rivers Siddons’ “Peachtree Road” for the same reason.

The newcomer will find that there are many books about Atlanta, which I hope will make a book list useful. They come in broad-brush histories and in specialized studies of events or people or trends, popular books, academic books, picture books, books by scholars, historians, journalists and citizens.

As Emory University professor Jamil Zainald put it in preparing a book list for an American Historical Association convention some years back, “Atlanta has not lacked for attention by historians,  writers, and journalists.”

Let me caution in advance that you are less likely to find most of the books on my list in even large bookstores, than in the smaller, used-book stores scattered around town, usually crammed to the ceiling with musty volumes. Libraries, of course, should have them.

One other point. These are not rah-rah books, as are the many tourist guidebooks for understandable reasons. But the books on my list are not overtly hostile either. I have always assumed that authors have a level of respect for Atlanta or they would not be writing about it.

The Atlanta History Center is ground zero for any research on the Atlanta area, and it has produced several histories over the years. The most daunting for anyone who dares try it is the late Franklin Garrett’s “Atlanta and Environs.” He wrote volumes one and two and journalist Harold Martin supplied volume three. Believe me. This is for the serious student.

A shorter, more manageable history that is also authoritative is the center’s “Metropolitian Frontiers,” a paperback by Andy Ambrose and Darlene Roth, based on the history center’s permanent Atlanta exhibit. Ambrose also wrote a definitive piece on Atlanta in the “New Georgia Encyclopedia” — which is available online — and an authoritative “Atlanta: An Illustratred History.”

As a former business writer for the AJC, I had always been interested in how Atlanta got where it did following World War II, when its ascent was by no means certain.

By all accounts, the explanation lies in the leadership of Atlanta’s white business elite, who engineered the city’s rise to regional dominance and then to national and even international status from  1945 and into the 1970s, when power was shared by the city’s black elite.

Two important historians who studied this phenomenon are at the top of my list: “Community Power Structure,” by sociologist Floyd Hunter, who coined that term in his 1953 classic about Atlanta’s leaders. He followed it up in 1980 with “Community Power Succession: Atlanta’s Policy-Makers,” which goes into the emergence of Atlanta’s black business elite.

Scholar Clarence N. Stone also covered this ground in “Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988,” in 1989. In an earlier book, “Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent,” he looks at how Atlanta handled — or perhaps mishandled — urban renewal.

Frederick Allen, ex-Atlanta Constitution reporter, went over much the same ground in “Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City, 1946-1966,” which looks at Atlanta’s fabled boosterism and self-promotion. Allen also wrote what I judge to be the best book about Atlanta’s most famous product, Coca-Cola, in “Secret Formula,” which is in essence a biography of the company’s iconic leader, Robert W. Woodruff. Another good Coke book is by Mark Pendergrast, “For God, Country and Coca-Cola.”

Although his book was about a number of cities, Washington Post journalist Joel Garreau covered the phenomenon of Atlanta’s contemporary, suburban growth as an “edge city” — his book, somewhat dated but still worthy, is “Edge City: Life on the New Frontier.” The title refers to the emergence, especially in cities like Atlanta and Dallas, of multiple, mixed-use “downtowns” as people and business spread out from (abandoned would be more apt) the original central business district. The CBD is now just one downtown among many.

Also worth citing for their astute criticism are “Imagineering Atlanta: The Politics of Place in the City of Dreams,” by Charles Rutheiser, and “Sprawl City: Race, Politics and Planning in Atlanta,” edited by Robert Bullard, Glenn Johnson and Angel Torres.

To enlarge on the title of  that last book, I would say that all historians agree that “race is a central element in Atlanta’s history.”

In this category is a book by another one-time AJC reporter, Gary Pomerantz, that I regard as possibly the best single book about Atlanta so far published: “Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: A Saga of Race and Family.”

It’s the story of two families that made history, the families of  Ivan Allen Jr.,  mayor of Atlanta in the pivotal 1960s era, and of Maynard H. Jackson Jr., the city’s first black mayor. In weaving the stories of these two families together, Pomerantz also tells Atlanta’s story up to the early ‘90s.

Clearly, there are many books about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, where Atlanta and Atlantans played such historic roles. I would suggest “Race and the Shaping of Twentieth Century Atlanta,” by Ronald H. Bayor. Another is “Atlanta: Race, Class and Urban Expansion,” by Larry Keating. I would also refer a reader for help to a library or a good bookstore.

Another important African-American from an earlier era who left his imprint not only on Atlanta but other places was W.E.B. DuBois, who taught at the Atlanta University Center at the turn of the 20th century. David L. Lewis did a two-part biography, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919,” and “W.E.B. Du Bois: the Fight for Equality in the American Century, 1919-1963.”

But don’t overlook the tragic underside of Atlanta’s racial history, and there is one. Another former AJC reporter, Steve Oney, wrote about the lynching of Leo Frank early in the 20th century in “And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank.” The lynching of Frank, a Jew, reflected the anti-Semitism of that period. In “The Temple Bombing,” published in 1996, Melissa Faye Greene shows that anti-Semitism was still present much later.

I think Atlanta greatly needs an updated architectural history, now that the city has gone post-modern at long last. The last one, published by the Atlanta Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1993, is the “AIA Guide to the Architecture of Atlanta.”

There is a recently published coffee table book about contemporary architecture in Atlanta,  “City by Design: an architectural perspective of Atlanta,” that looks at a variety of business, residential and government projects. It is one of a series of such books on major cities, but the AIA Chapter is the one that really needs to step in.

Emory professor and Atlanta historian Dana White put together probably the most comprehensive “Atlanta Bibliography,” from which I have shamelessly borrowed.

Here are some other titles in no particular order from White’s list: “Highbrows, Hillbillies, and Hellfire: Public Entertainment in Atlanta, 1880-1930,” by Steve Goodson;   “Automobile Age Atlanta: The Making of a Southern Metropolis, 1900-1935,” by Howard L. Preston, and “White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism,” by Kevin M. Kruse.

And for sheer fun, I recommend “Peachtree Creek: A Natural and Unnatural History of Atlanta’s Watershed.” It was written by David  R. Kaufman, who kayaked down Atlanta’s most famous creek from its beginning to its entry into the Chattahoochee River, and discovered another kind of “underside” to local history.

1. Don O'Briant says:

   June 1, 2009 at 9:40 am

   Tom,
   Don’t forget “Newcomer’s Guide to Georgia” by your former colleague.

   Reply
2. Janice Sikes says:

   June 1, 2009 at 2:13 pm

   Thanks for these titles and the shoutout to libraries (I happen to be a librarian /preservationist).
   Please add:
   Harry Lefever, Ph.D is the Sociologist who has had his Spelman students studying Atlanta neighborhhoods for years. His book “Sacred Places: African American Sites in Atlanta” is a great way for newcomers and oldheads alike to know the more about the whole story of our city. Having worked with Harry over the years I know his deep understanding of our town merits more volumes. His book on Spelman woman in the Civil Rights Struggle is a must read.

   Reply
3. Roy94 says:

   October 22, 2009 at 7:28 am

   Tags: personalSorry to hear about your job loss. ,

   Reply