Hometown

by Peter Davis

Book Overview

Hometown is a distinctly American place inhabited by all of us, and now it is captured in an important new book by the celebrated producer of the prize-winning films Hearts and Minds and The Selling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671245562
• ISBN13: 9780671245566
• Release Date: March 1982
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 331 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Probing the Heart of America

In the tradition of Robert and Helen Lynd's "Middletown" and Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio", author Peter Davis profiles an American town "big enough to have everything its people need and small enough so you can figure out what the hell is going on...northern enough to be industrial, southern enough to have a gently rural aspect, western enough to have once been on the frontier, eastern enough to have a past." Each chapter in this well-written volume is a vignette in a different setting within the town of Hamilton, Ohio circa 1978: a basketball game, a wedding, a trial, a strike at a toolworks; yet each advances the overall purpose of bringing a representative Amercian community into focus. The third chapter, "The Game," concerning the basketball showdown between blue-collar Garrison High School and the more affluent Taft, also happens to be one of the finest pieces of sports writing anywhere. Through captured conversations at Rotary Club meetings and a beauty parlor, through shrewd analysis of the historic roots of present divisions, through profiles of notable citizens from the mayor to a murderer, Davis weaves his tale of America at a turning point. Post-war prosperity is at an end, the age of the microprocessor has not yet dawned and most folks are doing there best to get by and make sense of it all. Many an author has set out to "look for America." Few have found it and told the tale as successfully as Peter Davis. (Note: Davis is a native of Upland, California, a fact that another reviewer might have noticed had he ventured as far as the second page.)

Homosexual teacher in a small town?

Peter Davis, a big-time national journalist, spent over one year learning the ins and outs of Hamilton, Ohio. Hamilton is a small town 30 miles north of Cinncinatti in southern Ohio. At the time Davis wrote the book, the town was integrating its schools, dealing with factory closures, and in economic decline. Davis chose as the focus of his study of Hamilton, Ohio the year-long scandal and trial involving a popular married high school teacher who was caught by an undercover policeman allegedly engaging in lewd conduct in the town's department store's mens' room. Davis lets the reader decide whether the man was guilty. Davis brings little Hamilton, Ohio, struggling with the social forces of the late 20th century, to life in this book. Too bad the book is out-of-print. I read Hometown:A Portrait of an American Community only because I have a friend who was originally from Hamilton. He now lives in California, and lent me the book to get an idea about his home town.Davis doesn't slum in the midwest in writing this book. He doesn't condescend. He describes the richest families in Hamilton, the social divides, and the attitudes towards the changes of the 1960s, as perculating through this small town. A good read!