The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Oct 6, 2024 6:47 PM

Author:Jane Jacobs

In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written.

Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on our urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-contained neighbourhoods, super-blocks, rigid 'scientific' plans and endless acres of grass. Yet they seldom stop to look at what actually works on the ground.

The real vitality of cities, argues Jacobs, lies in their diversity, architectural variety, teeming street life and human scale. It is only when we appreciate such fundamental realities that we can hope to create cities that are safe, interesting and economically viable, as well as places that people want to live in.

'Perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning... Jacobs has a powerful sense of narrative, a lively wit, a talent for surprise and the ability to touch the emotions as well as the mind' New York Times Book Review

Reviews

Essential, absorbing, infuriating, full-of-facts-you-didn't-know, saxophonely written. This is one of those situations where the book is better than the review, so you should read it... a radicalized moderate's moderate case for radical change.

—— Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review

Nostalgia is the antithesis of history. Anderson brilliantly exposes how nostalgia — the strategic oversimplification of our past — has erased complexity and friction from our country’s narrative to serve a single goal: to preserve the status quo for the benefit of those in power. As such, Evil Geniuses documents how history and nostalgia are engaged in a hand to hand combat that may determine our future.

—— Ken Burns, director of The Civil War and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

Evil Geniuses is Kurt Andersen at his riveting best - a genuinely original exploration of the forces that have shaped today's economy and society, and what can be done to repair the damage. A route map out of the strange season of pandemic.

—— Matthew D'Ancona, editor and partner of Tortoise Media and author of Post-Truth

Elegantly written, full of insight, and ultimately optimistic, Evil Geniuses challenges America to do better, to be better. A wry look at what went wrong and sober thinking about what needs to happen now. If you want to know why America is where it is and how it can change, this is your book.

—— Justin Webb, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme

This is the one book everyone must read. . . With lucid writing and head-snapping insights, Kurt Andersen explores how the right and big business, with unabashed greed, deliberately reengineered our economy. To fix that will require understanding the roots of the problem. . . A triumph.

—— Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci

Evil Geniuses is a vivid catalog of American sociopolitical history - a dedicated deep dive into this country's paradoxical legacy of innovation and ego, with Andersen as its clear-eyed, masterful archivist.

—— Rebecca Carroll, WNYC cultural critic and host of the podcast Come Through

Wow. Evil Geniuses is engaging, enraging, enthralling, appalling; a true tour de force. And most of all, it's the truth - about how these rapacious bastards have picked this country's bones for the last fifty years, and what the rest of us need to do to turn the tables. . . Exactly the book we need right now.

—— Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast columnist and author of If We Can Keep It

Back when the idea of President Reagan still seemed a stretch and President Trump was barely a joke, some serious, smart, committed people with vast appetites and little shame - right-wing intellectuals and billionaires, CEOs and Washington hustlers - launched a long war to create a paradigm shift and rewrite our social contract to their benefit. Andersen's dazzling, mind-bending, must-read chronicle of that fifty-year crusade explains how it happened, why it succeeded, and, unsettlingly, what that victory means: America is now theirs.

—— John Heilemann, co-host of Showtime’s The Circus, co-author of Game Change and Double Down

How did the United States turn from its long-standing egalitarian ideals to its present course of socially and morally catastrophic inequality? Kurt Andersen interrogates the past half century with characteristic intellectual ambition and literary bravado to find out. At once cultural history, memoir, and riff, Evil Geniuses explains how our country found its way into this predicament, and how we might yet get out of it.

—— Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy and Ronald Reagan

This book is the culmination of a lifetime's work in the country and is suffused with a love and knowledge that only such long acquaintance can bring

—— Hugh Thomson , Spectator

Passionate and profoundly engaged... [Davis'] presentation of the great river as Colombia's Mississippi, its fountain of music, the source of its many contradictions...generates an impact that few travel books can muster.

—— Brian Morton , Tablet

Music and myth, commerce and colonialism, indigeneity and identity: Magdalena is as impressively exploratory in approach as it is encyclopaedic in scope

—— Oliver Balch , Times Literary Supplement

From palatial Aztec botanic gardens to Qing Dynasty evolutionary theories, Horizons upends traditional accounts of the history of science, showing how curiosity and intellectual exploration was, and is, a global phenomenon

—— Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred

Remarkable. Challenges almost everything we know about science in the West

—— Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in 12 Maps

This perspective-shattering book challenges our Eurocentric narrative by spotlighting the work of historically neglected scientists

—— Caroline Sanderson , The Bookseller, 'Editor's Choice'

A useful corrective that brings us closer to a more accurate history of Western science - one which recognises Europe, not as exceptional, but as learning from the world

—— Angela Saini, author of Superior

The righting of the historical record makes Horizons a deeply satisfying read. We learn about a fascinating group of people engaged in scientific inquiry all over the world. Even more satisfyingly, Horizons demonstrates that the most famous scientists - Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein among them - couldn't have made their discoveries without the help of their global contacts

—— Valerie Hansen, author of The Year 1000

A provocative examination of major contributions to science made outside Europe and the USA, from ancient to modern times, explained in relation to global historical events. I particularly enjoyed the stories of individuals whose work tends to be omitted from standard histories of science

—— Ian Stewart, author of Significant Figures

A wonderful, timely reminder that scientific advancement is, and has always been, a global endeavour

—— Patrick Roberts, author of Jungle

This is the kind of history we need: it opens our eyes to the ways in which what we know today has been uncovered thanks to a worldwide team effort

—— Michael Scott, author of Ancient Worlds

An important milestone

—— British Journal for the History of Science, on Materials of the Mind

The freshest history of the strangest science

—— Alison Bashford, author of Global Population, on Materials of the Mind

Ambitious, riveting, Poskett tracks the global in so many senses . . . vital reading on some of the most urgent concerns facing the world history of science

—— Sujit Sivasundaram, University of Cambridge, on Materials of the Mind

Terrific . . . [Makes] a substantial contribution to understanding the universalizing properties of science and technology in history

—— Janet Browne, Harvard University, on Materials of the Mind

Horizons forces me to think outside my Eurocentric box and puts science at the centre of world history

—— David Reynolds , New Statesman, Books of the Year 2022

[Our Man is] heartfelt, virtuosic and quietly thoughtful at the same time

—— Daily Telegraph

Isabel Wilkerson's book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don't miss it!

—— Cornel West

A landmark piece of non-fiction

—— The New York Times

A briliant and stirring epic

—— Wall Street Journal

The mass migration of African Americans out of the US south forever changed the country's cultural fabric - and Wilkerson's history of this period is full of sacrifice and hope ...a long overdue account

—— Guardian

A deeply affecting, finely crafted and heroic book. . . .Wilkerson has taken on one of the most important demographic upheavals of the past century and told it through the lives of three people ... lyrical and tragic

—— Jill Lepore , New Yorker

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