In 1850 St Louis was the commercial capital of the West By 1860, however, Chicago had supplanted St Louis and became the great metropolis of the region This book explains the rapid ascent and the abrupt collapse of the Missouri city It devotes particular attention to the ways in which northeastern merchants fueled the rise of St Louis But unlike most ожзвб studies of nineteenth-century cities, the book analyzes the influence of national politics on urbanization It examines the process through whichthe sectional crisis transformed the role of Yankee merchants in St Louis's development and thus triggered the fall of the first great city of the trans-Mississippi West.  Птицы, птицы,ISBN 0521522358.