Preface<br >To write a book about the city Boston is somewhat incongruous， for in<br >point of fact Boston is not in actuality a city. It is a sprawling conglomer-<br >ate of wards， precincts， graphic neighborhoods--comlnunal organisms<br >composed of many radically different units of human life. Veritably it is<br >the American melting pot， in whicla the ingredients failed to brew illto a<br >solid form. It is built upon layers of society， scparalc raccs--Prolcslal/t<br >English， Catholic Irish， black Afro-American， European llalian， Russian<br >and Polish lew， Oriental Chinese， and import-export Puerto Rican.<br > Yet， despite the apparent social confusion and conllicl of ideas of social<br >and religious identity and responsibility， Boston is one of the great cities<br >of the world.<br > The Boston to which the author was introduced as an imprcssiollablc<br >young woman--falsely， or otherwise--was the harricd city of the t ortics<br >and tifties， in which many of the obsolete and rigid patterns of Hie social<br >behavior of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were being put to<br >the ultimate test. There still remained a handful of "proper" people who<br >would cling until the end of time to a closeted skclclon of lhc past rather<br >than create a living human being of contemporary mien. It was a oily<br >whose "watch and ward" censors in the thirties had banned Theodore<br >Dreiser s An American Tragedy as obscene. Boston was nol ~lW;_irc thai. in<br >so doing， it was declaring ilsel/ an American tragedy.<br > Like a cardboard house， the city was easily collapsible. Before il fell on<br >our heads we departed--a Beacon ttill dropout!<br > After thirty years we returned--briefly， but filled with remembrances<br >of the past， acutely conscious of the present， and concerned for the future.<br >At first we were appalled! How could so much change， wilh so liltlc ap-<br >parent forethought， have occurred? Then we recalled lhal wc had ex-<br >perienced a similar reaction upon visiting other cities. Wc have lived in an<br >era of radical change. What we saw in some instances was bad; in others，<br >