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Category Archives: Politics and Civic Interest
You Have the Right to Remain Innocent
You Have the Right to Remain Innocent © 2016 James Duane 152 pages “One of the Fifth amendment’s basic functions is to protect innocent men who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.” (Ohio v. Reiner) “People are inherently honest, … Continue reading
Local democracy and the State of Jefferson
mp3 One of the local-democracy initiatives Bill Kauffman covered in his Bye, Bye, Miss American Empire was the ‘state of Jefferson’, an area of northern California (and bits of southern Oregon) that want to be free of their respective governments. Today, … Continue reading
Bye Bye Miss American Empire
Bye Bye Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels, and Underdog Crusades to Redraw America’s Political Map© 2010 Bill Kauffman You say you want a devolution? \ Far beyond the city across the river, this country is pregnant with happy … Continue reading
The Works
The Works: Anatomy of a City© 2005 Kate Ascher240 pages Cities are, for my money, mankind’s most astonishing invention. Their complexity is stupefying — system within system, handling tons of material at any given time, whether the subject is cars … Continue reading
Posted in history, Politics and Civic Interest, Reviews
Tagged cities, civic awareness, energy, history, infrastructure, NYC, Politics-CivicInterest, trains, transportation, waste
4 Comments
The Road Taken
The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure336 pages© 2016 Henry Petroski What, exactly, is The Road Taken? Its title declares it a history, which is mostly true. It does have a bounty of historic sketches on the … Continue reading
Divided Highways
Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life© Tom Lewis 2007, 2013416 pages No engineering project in the United States is more impressive than the interstate system; dense with the connections of a street grid, it serves not blocks … Continue reading
Posted in Politics and Civic Interest, Reviews
Tagged Boston, cities, civic awareness, infrastructure, Politics-CivicInterest, transportation
5 Comments
America First
America First: Its History, Culture, and Politics© 1995 Bill Kauffman296 pages For slightly over a year prior to the attack at Pearl Harbor, there existed a civic organization of nearly a million people called the America First Committee. It dedicated … Continue reading
Playing to the Edge
Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror© Michael Hayden 2016464 pages As someone who became a civil libertarian in response to the increasingly sweeping powers of the surveillance state during the Bush administration, I began reading … Continue reading
Glass Houses
Glass Houses: Privacy, Secrecy, and Cyber Insecurity in a Transparent World© 2011, 2013 Joel Brenner320 pages Glass Houses, originally titled America the Vulnerable, outlines some of the major ways that private citizens, corporations, and the government itself are exposed to … Continue reading
The Great Debate
The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left© 2013 Yuval Levin296 pages The Great Debate uses the war of letters between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine to explain the philosophical differences between conservatism and … Continue reading
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