Michael Harrington Book Award awardee

Posted by on July 26, 2002

[Comm-Org]

From: “Peter Dreier”
Colleagues,

My publisher just emailed me the news that my book, PLACE MATTERS: METROPOLITICS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, has won the 2002 Michael Harrington Book Award from the American Political Science Assn. It is given for the “outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world.”

I was both suprised and very pleased by this award, because Mike was first my hero (I heard him speak when I was in junior high school and THE OTHER AMERICA had just come out), then my mentor, and later (when I served on the DSA national board) my friend. Terry and I named one of our daughters, Sarah Michaela, after Mike.

Mike always described his politics as advocating the “left wing of the possible” in contrast to being utopian or sectarian. This is what we tried to do with PLACE MATTERS. The award will be presented at the APSA meetings in Boston on August 31st; although I won’t be there, my coauthors, John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom, will be there to accept it.

Peter