en-US Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:58:24 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 34598060 What if the deadliest train wreck in the nation’s history was no accident?

When a passenger train derails in North Philadelphia with fatal results, idealistic criminal defense attorney Vaughn Coburn takes on the most personal case of his young career. The surviving engineer is his cousin Eddy, and when Eddy asks Vaughn to defend him, he can’t help but accept. Vaughn has a debt to repay, for he and his cousin share an old secret—one that changed both their lives forever.

As blame for the wreck zeros in on Eddy, Vaughn realizes there’s more to this case than meets the eye. Seeking the truth behind the crash, he finds himself the target of malicious attorneys, corrupt railroad men, and a mob boss whose son perished in the accident and wants nothing less than cold-blooded revenge. With the help of his ex-con private investigator and an old flame who works for the competition, Vaughn struggles to defeat powerful forces—and to escape his own past built on secrets and lies.]]> William L. Myers Jr. 1543600328 Sandy 0 to-read 4.03 2018
author: William L. Myers Jr.
name: Sandy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/04/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7673369 Instead of one black America, today there are four.

“There was a time when there were agreed-upon 'black leaders,' when there was a clear 'black agenda,' when we could talk confidently about 'the state of black America'—but not anymore.� —from Disintegration

The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a “Black America� with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book, Disintegration, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson argues that over decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered. Instead of one black America, now there are four:
� a Mainstream middle-class majority with a full ownership stake in American society;
� a large, Abandoned minority with less hope of escaping poverty and dysfunction than at any time since Reconstruction’s crushing end;
� a small Transcendent elite with such enormous wealth, power, and influence that even white folks have to genuflect;
� and two newly Emergent groups—individuals of mixed-race heritage and communities of recent black immigrants—that make us wonder what “black� is even supposed to mean.

Robinson shows that the four black Americas are increasingly distinct, separated by demography, geography, and psychology. They have different profiles, different mindsets, different hopes, fears, and dreams. What’s more, these groups have become so distinct that they view each other with mistrust and apprehension. And yet all are reluctant to acknowledge division.

Disintegration offers a new paradigm for understanding race in America, with implications both hopeful and dispiriting. It shines necessary light on debates about affirmative action, racial identity, and the ultimate question of whether the black community will endure.]]> 254 Eugene Robinson 0385526547 Sandy 5 Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson's survey of contemporary black America is a perceptive and thoughtful book. I found it laced with a strange nostalgia for Jim Crow-era black society, but given what the end of that forced solidarity has meant for those African-Americans he labels the Abandoned, perhaps that nostalgia is understandable, and maybe even forgivable. Some of his prescriptions on how best to resolve the plight of the Abandoned at the end of the book might surprise you. Worth reading by anyone who wants to get a handle on the more complex and somewhat paradoxical entity that too many of us still persist on thinking about as a unified whole, namely, African-American society today.]]> 3.94 2010
author: Eugene Robinson
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2011/07/10
date added: 2017/03/09
shelves:
review:
While it reads more like an extended Op-Ed than a book, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson's survey of contemporary black America is a perceptive and thoughtful book. I found it laced with a strange nostalgia for Jim Crow-era black society, but given what the end of that forced solidarity has meant for those African-Americans he labels the Abandoned, perhaps that nostalgia is understandable, and maybe even forgivable. Some of his prescriptions on how best to resolve the plight of the Abandoned at the end of the book might surprise you. Worth reading by anyone who wants to get a handle on the more complex and somewhat paradoxical entity that too many of us still persist on thinking about as a unified whole, namely, African-American society today.
]]> 19199015
We are living in the most dramatic period in architectural history in more than half a a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole cities are being invented overnight in exotic locales or here in the United States.

Now, in a bold and wide-ranging new work, Rowan Moore—former director of the Architecture Foundation, now the architecture critic for The Observer—explores the reasons behind these changes in our built environment, and how they in turn are changing the way we live in the world. Taking as his starting point dramatic examples such as the High Line in New York City and the outrageous island experiment of Dubai, Moore then reaches far and back in time to explore the Covent Garden brothels of eighteenth-century London and the fetishistic minimalism of Adolf Loos; across the world to assess a software magnate’s grandiose mansion in Atlanta and Daniel Libeskind’s failed design for the World Trade Center site; and finally to the deeply naturalistic work of Lina Bo Bardi, whom he celebrates as the most underrated architect of the modern era.]]> 473 Rowan Moore 0062277596 Sandy 5
After reading this book, you may well conclude that most Brand Name Architects don't do that. Rowan Moore writes about architecture as if people mattered: this book is stuffed full of ego, sex, money and power, things usually not found in writing about architecture but things that all factor into what gets built and why.

This is actually a morality tale of sorts, and it has a hero: Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, who he considers the most underrated modern architect of the 20th century. He makes a compelling argument for that view by contrasting her buildings, and more importantly how she arrived at them, to the other structures thrown up over history assessed in this book.

At the end, you may not agree with his critique of architectural thinking, but you can't finish this book and not have your thinking on the subject changed, at least a little bit.]]> 3.90 2012
author: Rowan Moore
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/19
date added: 2014/10/09
shelves:
review:
Frank Lloyd Wright's clients often complained about the furniture he designed for the homes and offices he built for them. Why? It was often ill-suited for the uses to which it was supposed to be put, out of scale or proportion to the users, or had some other defect that suggested he wasn't actually thinking about the people who would use them.

After reading this book, you may well conclude that most Brand Name Architects don't do that. Rowan Moore writes about architecture as if people mattered: this book is stuffed full of ego, sex, money and power, things usually not found in writing about architecture but things that all factor into what gets built and why.

This is actually a morality tale of sorts, and it has a hero: Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, who he considers the most underrated modern architect of the 20th century. He makes a compelling argument for that view by contrasting her buildings, and more importantly how she arrived at them, to the other structures thrown up over history assessed in this book.

At the end, you may not agree with his critique of architectural thinking, but you can't finish this book and not have your thinking on the subject changed, at least a little bit.
]]> 6971469
Appetite for America is the incredible real-life story of Fred Harvey—told in depth for the first time ever—as well as the story of this country’s expansion into the Wild West of Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, of the great days of the railroad, of a time when a deal could still be made with a handshake and the United States was still uniting. As a young immigrant, Fred Harvey worked his way up from dishwasher to household name: He was Ray Kroc before McDonald’s, J. Willard Marriott before Marriott Hotels, Howard Schultz before Starbucks. His eating houses and hotels along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad (including historic lodges still in use at the Grand Canyon) were patronized by princes, presidents, and countless ordinary travelers looking for the best cup of coffee in the country. Harvey’s staff of carefully screened single young women—the celebrated Harvey Girls—were the country’s first female workforce and became genuine Americana, even inspiring an MGM musical starring Judy Garland.

With the verve and passion of Fred Harvey himself, Stephen Fried tells the story of how this visionary built his business from a single lunch counter into a family empire whose marketing and innovations we still encounter in myriad ways. Inspiring, instructive, and hugely entertaining, Appetite for America is historical biography that is as richly rewarding as a slice of fresh apple pie—and every bit as satisfying.]]> 518 Stephen Fried 0553804375 Sandy 5
The story of Harvey and the company he founded - which was known only by his name for its entire existence - gets a thorough and entertaining telling in former _Philadelphia_ magazine staffer Stephen Fried's biohistory. The Harvey family, with its strong-willed women and its disgruntled siblings, is as fascinating as its patriarch's creation of American dining as we now know it.

I came on the scene after Fred Harvey, the company, had long since moved from my forever hometown of Kansas City - one of those disgruntled siblings moved it to his hometown of Chicago - and been sold to a conglomerate that presided over its slow, sad demise. I was old enough to remember the Harvey Houses - his more casual restaurants, the last of which closed in the mid-1960s - and to still see "Meals by Fred Harvey" on Santa Fe dining car menus, but the glory days of Fred Harvey had long since passed by then. This book revisits them and reveals why they were so glorious.

Also: Try the recipes in the back of the book.]]> 4.16 2010
author: Stephen Fried
name: Sandy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2012/02/02
date added: 2013/05/12
shelves:
review:
Anyone with a interest in American business, Southwestern architecture, the history of American restaurants and the story of American railroading should read this history of the British immigrant who invented the chain restaurant in cahoots with his early sponsor, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The name "Fred Harvey" became synonymous with delicious food served efficiently by courteous, friendly women all along the Santa Fe route, and Harvey's restaurants and hotels - and later, his dining car service - helped establish the Santa Fe's reputation for first-class passenger travel.

The story of Harvey and the company he founded - which was known only by his name for its entire existence - gets a thorough and entertaining telling in former _Philadelphia_ magazine staffer Stephen Fried's biohistory. The Harvey family, with its strong-willed women and its disgruntled siblings, is as fascinating as its patriarch's creation of American dining as we now know it.

I came on the scene after Fred Harvey, the company, had long since moved from my forever hometown of Kansas City - one of those disgruntled siblings moved it to his hometown of Chicago - and been sold to a conglomerate that presided over its slow, sad demise. I was old enough to remember the Harvey Houses - his more casual restaurants, the last of which closed in the mid-1960s - and to still see "Meals by Fred Harvey" on Santa Fe dining car menus, but the glory days of Fred Harvey had long since passed by then. This book revisits them and reveals why they were so glorious.

Also: Try the recipes in the back of the book.
]]> 13259312 The New, New Deal is a riveting story about change in the Obama era—and an essential handbook for voters who want the truth about the president, his record, and his enemies.

In a riveting account based on new documents and interviews with more than 400 sources on both sides of the aisle, award-winning reporter Michael Grunwald reveals the vivid story behind President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus bill, one of the most important and least understood pieces of legislation in the history of the country. Grunwald’s meticulous reporting shows how the stimulus, though reviled on the right and the left, helped prevent a depression while jump-starting the president’s agenda for lasting change. As ambitious and far-reaching as FDR’s New Deal, the Recovery Act is a down payment on the nation’s economic and environmental future, the purest distillation of change in the Obama era.

The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network.

Michael Grunwald goes behind the scenes—sitting in on cabinet meetings, as well as recounting the secret strategy sessions where Republicans devised their resistance to Obama—to show how the stimulus was born, how it fueled a resurgence on the right, and how it is changing America. The New New Deal shatters the conventional Washington narrative and it will redefine the way Obama’s first term is perceived.]]> 432 Michael Grunwald 1451642326 Sandy 4 3.94 2012
author: Michael Grunwald
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/05/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 7232982 342 Stanley Bennett Clay 0758255756 Sandy 0 to-read 4.05 2010
author: Stanley Bennett Clay
name: Sandy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/05/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 157642 376 Zachary M. Schrag 080188246X Sandy 5
Transportation historians will appreciate Schrag's descriptions of the Metro's design and engineering, driven by a conscious intent to avoid replicating the cramped, depressing subways of New York, Philadelphia and Boston. The story of how local civic activists continually worked to outfox powerful Congressmen intent on ramming a network of freeways through the city, and largely succeeded despite the fact that District residents had no say whatsoever in their own governance and affairs at the time, brings to the fore the ways the first and second Washingtons differ from each other.

Students of American society will note that, as the book's title indicates, the Washington Metro is also the product of a unique period in American history, the era when the belief in government as a force for good with the capacity to transform society and cure its defects reached its high-water mark. The fate of rapid transit in cities outside Washington, a number of which built new lines or systems from roughly 1970 to 2000, only serves to underscore the unique mix of time, place and people that made the second-busiest subway system in the United States a reality.

"What kind of city do you want?" Activists in Washington's Mid-City section asked residents this stark question in the years leading up to Metro's construction. Today's U Street is the product of their answer to that question: revitalized, thanks in part to the subway line Mid-City residents insisted on, the last segment of the original 103-mile Metro system to be completed. Washington the City would be a far different - and far less appealing - place to live and work had Metro never been built, and this book tells us how the city avoided the grimmer fate of a number of large older U.S. cities.]]> 4.18 2006
author: Zachary M. Schrag
name: Sandy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2011/11/14
date added: 2013/03/30
shelves:
review:
There are actually two Washingtons: Washington the National Capital and Washington the City. The two inhabit the same physical space but differ in a number of respects that only become obvious after spending some time outside the city's monumental core. Most of us know a lot about that first one thanks to the media and the political class. This book about how "America's Subway" came to be brings the second Washington to the fore.

Transportation historians will appreciate Schrag's descriptions of the Metro's design and engineering, driven by a conscious intent to avoid replicating the cramped, depressing subways of New York, Philadelphia and Boston. The story of how local civic activists continually worked to outfox powerful Congressmen intent on ramming a network of freeways through the city, and largely succeeded despite the fact that District residents had no say whatsoever in their own governance and affairs at the time, brings to the fore the ways the first and second Washingtons differ from each other.

Students of American society will note that, as the book's title indicates, the Washington Metro is also the product of a unique period in American history, the era when the belief in government as a force for good with the capacity to transform society and cure its defects reached its high-water mark. The fate of rapid transit in cities outside Washington, a number of which built new lines or systems from roughly 1970 to 2000, only serves to underscore the unique mix of time, place and people that made the second-busiest subway system in the United States a reality.

"What kind of city do you want?" Activists in Washington's Mid-City section asked residents this stark question in the years leading up to Metro's construction. Today's U Street is the product of their answer to that question: revitalized, thanks in part to the subway line Mid-City residents insisted on, the last segment of the original 103-mile Metro system to be completed. Washington the City would be a far different - and far less appealing - place to live and work had Metro never been built, and this book tells us how the city avoided the grimmer fate of a number of large older U.S. cities.
]]> 9897152
America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly... Or are they?

As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole. More than half of America's income is earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers use, on average, 40 percent less energy than suburbanites.

Glaeser travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Even the worst cities-Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos- confer surprising benefits on the people who flock to them, including better health and more jobs than the rural areas that surround them. Glaeser visits Bangalore and Silicon Valley, whose strangely similar histories prove how essential education is to urban success and how new technology actually encourages people to gather together physically. He discovers why Detroit is dying while other old industrial cities-Chicago, Boston, New York-thrive. He investigates why a new house costs 350 percent more in Los Angeles than in Houston, even though building costs are only 25 percent higher in L.A. He pinpoints the single factor that most influences urban growth-January temperatures-and explains how certain chilly cities manage to defy that link. He explains how West Coast environmentalists have harmed the environment, and how struggling cities from Youngstown to New Orleans can "shrink to greatness." And he exposes the dangerous anti-urban political bias that is harming both cities and the entire country.

Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and eloquent argument, Glaeser makes an impassioned case for the city's import and splendor. He reminds us forcefully why we should nurture our cities or suffer consequences that will hurt us all, no matter where we live.]]> 352 Edward L. Glaeser 159420277X Sandy 4
He also suggests that our policies have kept cities from flourishing as much as they could.]]> 3.91 2011
author: Edward L. Glaeser
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/12/21
date added: 2013/03/30
shelves:
review:
Libertarian Harvard economist Edward Glaeser sings the praises of everything the typical American metropolis is not - dense, intense, croweded, and did we say dense? - in this paean to the city.

He also suggests that our policies have kept cities from flourishing as much as they could.
]]> 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Sandy 5 3.99 1932
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2012/12/21
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]]> 4119 Eloquent and visionary, this is a compelling argument for these settings of informal public life as essential for the health both of our communities and ourselves. And its message is being heard: Today, entrepreneurs from Seattle to Florida are heeding the call of The Great Good Place--opening coffee houses, bookstores, community centers, bars, and other establishments and proudly acknowledging their indebtedness to this book.



]]> 384 Ray Oldenburg 1569246815 Sandy 5 3.86 1989
author: Ray Oldenburg
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2012/09/06
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]]> 7510517 Ěý
In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent and frequently cited economists in America (former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT, and author of the controversial “The Quiet Coup� in The Atlantic )—and James Kwak give a wide-ranging, meticulous, and bracing account of recent U.S. financial history within the context of previous showdowns between American democracy and Big from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They convincingly show why our future is imperiled by the ideology of finance (finance is good, unregulated finance is better, unfettered finance run amok is best) and by Wall Street’s political control of government policy pertaining to it.
Ěý
As the authors insist, the choice that America faces is whether Washington will accede to the vested interests of an unbridled financial sector that runs up profits in good years and dumps its losses on taxpayers in lean years, or reform through stringent regulation the banking system as first and foremost an engine of economic growth. To restore health and balance to our economy, Johnson and Kwak make a radical yet feasible and focused reconfigure the megabanks to be “small enough to fail.�
Ěý
Lucid, authoritative, crucial for its timeliness, 13 Bankers is certain to be one of the most discussed and debated books of 2010.]]> 305 Simon Johnson 0307379051 Sandy 0 to-read 3.86 2010
author: Simon Johnson
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/06/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 231
Our story unfolds at fictional Dupont University: those Olympian halls of scholarship housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.

As Charlotte encounters the paragons of Dupont's privileged elite--her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus--she is seduced by the heady glamour of acceptance, betraying both her values and upbringing before she grasps the power of being different--and the exotic allure of her own innocence.

With his trademark satirical wit and famously sharp eye for telling detail, Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons draws on extensive observations at campuses across the country to immortalize the early-21st-century college-going experience.]]> 738 Tom Wolfe 0312424442 Sandy 0 currently-reading 3.46 2004
author: Tom Wolfe
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/07/27
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 2569072
America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote as we do. This social transformation didn't happen by accident. We’ve built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood -- and religion and news show -- most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don’t know and can’t understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.

In 2004, the journalist Bill Bishop, armed with original and startling demographic data, made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by red state or blue state, but by city and even neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.]]> 384 Bill Bishop 0618689354 Sandy 5
According to this book, since the 1960s, Americans have been sorting themselves out into like-minded tribal communities, whose members reinforce one another's already-existing views, attitudes, and prejudices. The end product of this "Big Sort" is an increasingly polarized body politic, more ideologically pure parties, the urban-rural electoral split I've remarked on several discussion boards, and quite possibly the end of America as we've known it (a conclusion Bishop does not reach in the book, which ends with an answer posed in the form of a question).

Are we "one nation, after all"? You might indeed wonder after reading this book, which offers many useful insights into how our politics and culture reached its current curdled state.]]> 3.82 2008
author: Bill Bishop
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/02/11
date added: 2009/02/11
shelves:
review:
I like to mix it up with people who do not share my worldview. If Bill Bishop is right, this makes me an American oddity.

According to this book, since the 1960s, Americans have been sorting themselves out into like-minded tribal communities, whose members reinforce one another's already-existing views, attitudes, and prejudices. The end product of this "Big Sort" is an increasingly polarized body politic, more ideologically pure parties, the urban-rural electoral split I've remarked on several discussion boards, and quite possibly the end of America as we've known it (a conclusion Bishop does not reach in the book, which ends with an answer posed in the form of a question).

Are we "one nation, after all"? You might indeed wonder after reading this book, which offers many useful insights into how our politics and culture reached its current curdled state.
]]> 2046417 In Architecture of the Absurd, John Silber dares to peek behind the curtain of "genius" architects and expose their willful disdain for their clients, their budgets, and the people who live or work inside their creations.
In his twenty-five years as President of Boston University, Dr. Silber oversaw a building program totaling more than 13 million square feet. Here he constructs an unflinching case, beautifully illustrated, against the worst trends in contemporary architecture. He challenges architects to derive creative satisfaction from meeting the practical needs of clients and the public. He urges the directors of our universities, symphony orchestras, museums, and corporations to stop financing inefficient, overpriced architecture, and calls on clients and the public to tell the emperors of our skylines that their pretensions cannot hide the naked absurdity of their designs.]]> 97 John Silber 1593720270 Sandy 5 3.31 2007
author: John Silber
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2007/11/01
date added: 2007/12/01
shelves:
review:
Say what you will about the combative former president/chancellor of Boston University, you really can't argue with the main point he makes in this short book based on a speech he gave to an AIA meeting in Texas: Our worship of "genius" in architecture has given us buildings that don't work. Instead of satisfying the needs of the clients, "genius" architects focus on ego -- their own and those of the people who commission them and the critics who write about their work. Can we return to a world where form follows function? Silber hopes so, and this book is his effort to get us back to that happier state.
]]> 32096 Her new novel, set in the 1850s, speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice--the strong, wry, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the question of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom.
Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive--a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at twenty, making a good marriage--to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.
Lidie packs up and goes with him. And the novel races alongside them into the Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters, where wandering youths kill you as soon as look at you--where Lidie becomes even more fervently abolitionist than her husband as the young couple again and again barely escape entrapment in webs of atrocity on both sides of the great question.
And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn't falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers--a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. On the run, her life threatened, her wits sharpened, she takes on yet another identity--and, in the very midst of her masquerade, discovers herself.
Lidie grows increasingly important to us as we follow her travels and adventures on the feverish eve of the War Between the States. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual and wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and its powerful recapturing of an almost forgotten part of the American story, this is Jane Smiley at her enthralling and enriching best.]]> 452 Jane Smiley 0449910830 Sandy 5 3.57 1998
author: Jane Smiley
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2007/11/18
shelves:
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]]> 4605 482 Jane Smiley 2743604913 Sandy 5 3.47 1995
author: Jane Smiley
name: Sandy
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2003/07/01
date added: 2007/11/18
shelves:
review:
Anyone who has worked or taught in a university will appreciate this satirical novel set in an unnamed land-grant university in a Midwestern state with a strong resemblance to Iowa. Smiley, who manages to find the entire world in the cornfields of her native region, gets the personalities, idiosyncracies and bizarre internal politics of American academe exactly right in this book.
]]>