Bumpy Road Ahead; Two eminent social critics put our culture on red alert.(Book Review)

Publication: Newsweek

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Byline: Malcolm Jones

Experience teaches us that when we are approached on the street by a man carrying a sign announcing the end is near, we should do two things: give the guy a wide berth and don't believe a word he says. But what if the person carrying the sign turns out to be a highly respected social critic or a noted cultural historian? Maybe we should stick around and listen up.

Back when Jane Jacobs published "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" in 1961, city planners and traffic engineers did their best to laugh her out of town. In the intervening decades, we have come to see the wisdom of almost everything she had to say about neighborhoods as the pulse and soul of city life. So when...

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