February 2022 in Review

Posted on March 1, 2022 by smellincoffee

I read a lot of books in February. Few of them applied to my challenges, though. The good news is that I continue to make progress on my great and worthy opponent, Mount TBR.

Climbing Mount Doom (Base goal: read or discard one book a week)
Week 1: Read Songs of America
Week 2: Read How To Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, Ben Shapiro
Week 3: Read The Authoritarian Moment, Ben Shapiro
Week 4: Read Jewels of Allah and Unmasked.

SCIENCE SURVEY (Base Goal: 12 Books)
….

3/12 so far.

Readin’ Dixie (Base goal: one book a month)
……

Classics Club (Base goal: 10 books)

….

The Unreviewed:
Oh, boy. The two Shapiro books are getting a combined review, my review of Unmasked is pending The Authoritarian Moment because it’s a helpful illustration; and I just haven’t gotten to The Professor in the Cage yet. Jewels of Allah wasn’t as substantive as I’d hoped, and is a very brief history of female activism in Iran predating the Pahlavis and continuing to the present day. Of interest was the author’s argument that the shah’s overnight banning of hijabs, while intended to be empowering, instead isolated women from conservative families, as they avoided participating in society in an immodest state: while the mullah’s hijab mandate was equally offensive from a personal rights view, it allowed these women to fully engage with society, particularly in university attendance, and saw the forging of a uniquely Islamic feminism.

Coming up in March:

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, so I’ll be tackling Dante’s Purgatory, as well as finishing a book from an Orthodox source on the psychology of sin.

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Slanted

Posted on February 25, 2022 by smellincoffee

Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism
© 2020 Sharyl Attkisson
316 pages

I stopped watching television news in 2009, a decision made for me by the overnight obsolescence of my TV set when the industry shifted to digital-only programming.  I didn’t miss it, truth be told;  it was shallow,  and tended toward the sensational even then. It didn’t help that I was increasingly prone to think of the media as nothing more than the handmaiden of the corporate state,  which distracted those it could not deceive.  In Slanted, a veteran reporter who began her career with CNN and CBS shares the discouraging path that the mainstream media has gone down, sacrificing its integrity for the sake of ratings, entertainment value, and ideological purity.  

The core problem, Attkisson writes, is that news corporations no longer assess the facts and deliver the story that develops from them: they begin with a pre-conceived idea and focus their reporting around that.  The preconceived pattern, the Narrative, has certain characteristics; it is one-sided, advances political interests while pretending to be nonpolitical, and relies heavily on withholding information on the grounds that the public (we knuckle-dragging unwashed masses in flyover country) would get the wrong idea were we exposed to all of the facts. Attkisson first noticed this at CBS, when numerous of her stories were tabled or revised into impotency by the higher-ups, motivated by corporate ties or political connections. Sometimes this was innocuous, even risible, as when a story on the corruption of school lunch funding was shelved because Michelle Obama was concurrently promoting better school lunches, and the bureaucrats-in-charge didn’t want to look as though they were attacking her work. Other instances were more serious, like the shelving of a story about dangerous 737 airframes, or another story on the ginned-up panic over swine flu. As the years progressed, Attkisson saw the politicization of news becoming less the exception and more the rule: instead of creating stories for intelligent viewers who wanted to hear and assess both sides of an issue, Attkisson was asked to seek out extreme viewpoints to create more polarizing stories. This unprofessionalism was made worse by increasingly obvious, and fairly uniform, political bias.  The drift of the news into sensationalism was most epitomized by the replacement of feature stories by panels, so that instead of focused dive into the facts of a story, viewers were instead subjected to six or more talking heads bouncing off one another.  

Although the final part of her work addresses the media’s contempt for Donald Trump specifically, Attkisson smartly establishes a nonpartisan case for media bias prior to this, drawing chiefly on criticisms of the media from liberal or progressive sources. She also presents readers with the evidence for their own review: one DailyShow video attacking various thoughtcriminals for their evaluations of COVID circa March-April 2020, for instance, puts the ‘offenders’ statements side by side of those put forth by establishment media or more favored politicians. Drawing on the same data, both came to similar conclusions — that COVID was dangerous chiefly to the elderly, that most deaths (at that time) had been linked to Washington nursing homes, etc. Why would one personality be damned for a statement and another be ignored? More importantly is Attkisson’s focus: she’s not writing about media bias because the media is biased against her; she’s writing against it because journalism itself has been destroyed by this naked embrace of narrative-centered sensationalism. The variety of stories has dwindled, the content of those stories has become increasingly inaccurate (the vetting of facts and sources being a casualty of news that tries to march to twitter’s timeline), and people are increasingly dropping them for nontraditional reporters. Gleaning news from twitter or facebook is worse than from the mainstream media, though: not only is it presented in a more superficial way, but the platforms have taken a page from the journalists’ book and are now actively censoring information that people can see.

Slanted makes for compelling reading, especially for those who believe that a free press is the lifeblood of a free nation. Although any story will carry a bias in the facts it chooses to report on, the one-sidedness of virtually all of our major news outlets and their reliance on cheap tricks to get viewer eyeballs does us no good. Neil Postman was aware of this in the eighties, when he wrote about the adulteration of journalism by television in his Amusing Ourselves to Death, and the problem is far worse now. I don’t know that there’s a plausible solution in the age of social media: at this point several generations of news-entertainers have come up through the ranks of the old news corporations, and those who can remember when their institutions did genuine investigation and nonpartisan coverage are aging out of the industry. Attkisson does provide a list of people within organizations whose personal integrity means they can be counted on for solid reporting, even if their institution as a whole now panders to the lowest common denominator.

Related:
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman.
Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman

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Of cyclists, colonial Catholics, and crappy endings

Posted on February 21, 2022 by smellincoffee

Last weekend I stayed at the Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, there to be evaluated for admission to their kidney transplant list. Much of my downtime was spent (how else) reading.

How Cycling Can Save the World is a straightforward argument for the promotion of bicycling as transportation, following the Dutch example. Walker is particularly interested in reviving urban cycling’s prospects in Great Britain. which had some support at the time from Mayor (now Prime Minister) Boris Johnson, and he compares Johnson’s efforts with those of Bloomberg’s transport coordinator, Janette Sadik-Khan. Contrary to the book’s title, Walker doesn’t draw much on the environmental appeal of bike transport; instead, he focuses on health, human happiness, and the boons to cities. Preaching to the choir for me, of course, but I have three books waiting (Creating the Dutch Cycling City, Copenhaganize, and Streetfight) on the practicalities of creating better streets and human spaces within American cities.

Next up was Pioneer Priests and Makeshift Altars, which I’d intended to save for June. This is a history of colonial America’s Catholic communities, which were few and hard-pressed. Connor begins with a history of the reformation, particularly as it developed in England, before moving to the creation of Maryland as a hoped-for Catholic refuge during the era of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. English Catholics were more willing to try their luck at home than abroad, though, and Connor details how Maryland was quickly swamped by Puritans – -who, during the coup-by-Parliament that brought William and Mary of the Netherlands to the English throne, made Catholic colonists enemies in their own place once again. Despite the disdain many of the founding generation for Catholics, and the risk that independent states might impose some form of protestantism as the new state religion, many Catholics supported the cause for independence. Connor attributes this to Charles Carroll’s role as a revolutionary leader, as well as the pragmatic determination that it was better to stand side by side of puritanical patriots and have a voice in creating the new nation than to be permanently cast as outsider loyalists. This is a generally-ignored area of early American history, and I’m glad for Connor’s series. I’ll probably be continuing with his books on Catholics in the Civil War, followed by the Catholic experience in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was strengthened by mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, Poland, etc.

Called to Serve is another book on Catholics in early America, this one focusing on nuns.

Lastly and very leastly, I picked up John Grisham’s Sooley from the library bookstore. It costs $0.25 there ,and I’d like a refund. I’ve read Grisham’s other sport books before and more or less enjoyed them — particularly Bleachers, with its unique appeal to anyone who’s experience Friday night football in a small southern town. Sooley had promise, introducing us to a sweet kid from South Sudan whose height, talent, and hard work take him to America to play basketball. Within weeks of his arrival, he learns that his family has been dislocated by Sudan’s interminable civil war. Although he wants to return, he’s convinced by his stateside mentors that he can help them far better from the States, where he’s in a position to forward them money and raise awareness for their and other refugees’ plight. Although Sooley struggles both with this and the increasing challenge of playing basketball against other men who are just as talented as he is, he’s breaking out and on his way to glory when the hedonism his new wealth unlocks gets the better of him. I had mixed feelings about the novel before reaching the frustratingly dismal ending (the sentence structure is oddly simplistic, as if Grisham were writing for a younger or duller audience), Grisham’s weak attempt to put a silver lining on his bleak and depressing story reinforced my already healthy disaffection for him as an author.

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Hunting the Eagles

Posted on February 18, 2022 by smellincoffee

Hunting the Eagles
© 2016 Ben Kane
402 pages

Legio aeterna! Aeterna vitrix!

Six years ago, Rome was humiliated and a tenth of her army destroyed when a faithless auxiliary lured three legions into a boggy ambush in the Teutoburg forest. Centurion Tullus, one of the few survivors of the day, has cursed it since: demoted and barred from Italy, he can only mourn his fallen brothers and destroyed career. A chance encounter with Germanicus, newly appointed commander of the Rhine forces, offers him a chance to do more. Rome must punish the barbarians for their perfidy, and recover the eagles stolen from the men left to rot in Germany’s dark forests and rotten bogs. To avenge the fallen and restore the glory of Rome — this is Tullus’ mission.

As with Eagles at War we experience this summer through both Tullus’ and Arminius’ eyes. While Arminius devotes himself to the thankless task of keeping the German tribes united in their mission to defy Rome’s expansion (difficult, given how many German chieftans are headstrong and want to pursue their own targets), Tullus has the equally haunting mission of helping Germanicus confront a widespread mutiny in the ranks, followed by the dangerous business in German territory. With Tullus are a handful of his men from the now-lost 18th, who give us the infantryman’s perspective as well. We revisit (literally) the battleground of the ambush, as Germanicus wishes to pay his respects to the fallen and study the landscape his adversary so skillfully used. Although Germanicus is far wilier than Varus, Arminius presents no less a challenge.

Eagles at War is one of the best works of historical fiction I’ve ever read, and while Hunting the Eagles isn’t as stellar, it’s a case of shooting for the moon and landing in the stars; it’s still excellent reading. Kane presents us two opposing characters, both wholly sympathetic, and in the case of Tullus allows us to experience his strong bond with his men, as well. This is most effective when Tullus and Germanicus reach the hallowed ground where the dead lay, and Tullus and the others are overcome with grief for those who they had to abandon. It is their grief, distilled into determination for revenge, that allows Tullus and the others to survive Arminus’ continued efforts to destroy the morale of the Roman army and rout it once again. As with Eagles, I especially appreciate the way Kane integrates historical artifacts into the narrative; his characters exist not in a haze of memory and imagination, but are tied down to the real world — in objects of leather and metal, the remnants of which we can see today.

Expect quite a bit more of Kane this year; I have another book in this series, plus two in his Richard the Lionhearted series. Those two will arrive in April for Read of England.

Related:
Simon Scarrow’s own “Eagle” series, following two soldiers (a centurion and optio) through Rome’s campaigns in Britain, the Rhine, and the East.

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A Hole in the Wind

Posted on February 17, 2022 by smellincoffee

A Hole in the Wind: A Climate Scientist’s Bicycle Journey Across the United States
© 2017 David Goodrich
304 pages

A Hole in the Wind features a retired climate scientist touring from Delaware to to Oregon, speaking with people along the way about how climate change is impacting their lives. Having studied climate and ocean dynamics for decades, Goodrich was disappointed at how politicized the subject became, and hoped to communicate the reality better from his informal, two-wheeled vantage point. Goodrich also connects some of his prior bike tours across parts of the US to the narrative, particularly when they’re relevant to his mission, as when he compares two fire seasons across the same stretch of road. Moving from Delaware to Oregon, Goodrich observes highly specific expressions of environmental impact: eroding barrier islands in the east, poisoned groundwater in the midwest, dying trees from beetles that short winters do not kill, declining aquifers, and the longer, more severe fire seasons in the west. Although this train of disasters might make the book sound gloomy, most of its content is based on Goodrich’s bicycle journey, particularly the friendly people he meets along the way, and the challenges inherent in biking thousands of miles, through rain and hail and fire season. (Only wind deters Goodrich: the flatlands of the American interior proved more challenging than Pennsylvania hill country, as headwinds stopped him in his tracks.) I think Goodrich is on the right track on communicating science; stories of how ordinary people’s lives are being challenged and stressed — not from potential threats but from a visibly deteriorating environment — work better to drive the point home.

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The Harrows of Spring

Posted on February 13, 2022 by smellincoffee

The Harrows of Spring
© 2016 Jim Kunstler
384 pages

The long winter is ending, and the earth is growing green again, but it is still a time of hardship and sorrow. Food stores are limited, and predators — human and animal — stalk the land. Fourth in in Jim Kunstler’s World Made by Hand series, Harrows of Spring completes the seasonal progression and brings us back around to our beginning, this time forcing the people of Union Grove to rally together against and outside aggressor, even as they struggle to put food on the table and tend the sick. The fourth book ends on a hopeful note, and is stronger than The Witch of Hebron or A History of the Future.

We open to find the people of Union Grove in the ‘six weeks want’, the lean period when winter’s stores are nearly exhausted, and the earth hasn’t begun to deliver fresh bounty yet. Making matters worse is that no outside supplies are coming in: Stephen Bullock has stopped running his boat down the Hudson. Brother Jobe and Robert Earle think Bullock’s peevishness is the height of their problems, but they soon spy a group of tents on the outskirts — a traveling community of very peculiar young people, who speak with the zeal of missionaries but despise religion. They are traveling the width and breadth of the land, preaching Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality — and also, give us your money, because we’re here to restore the government. No one in the Grove is interested in what they’re selling, and these DIE-hards soon resort to every statist’s favorite tool: violence and theft. At the same time, the Grove has the usual problems: machines failing, people dying of diseases that the doctors understand but are powerless to remedy, and the odd bear attack.

Harrows of Spring is much stronger than World Made by Hand, focusing as it does on the real problems of the Union Grove village, instead of trying to make us care about some narrative history about the goings on far away. Even so, the outside antagonists, the Berkshire People’s Republic, border on preposterous when they’re not practicing violence: I get what Kunstler was doing, though, in trying to show the appeal of political ideologies in a time of stress. Fortunately, we don’t have to spend a lot of time hearing them preach, and they expose their true nature as brigands with a penchant for speeches soon enough.

So ends The World Made by Hand series, which I’ve enjoyed despite its quirks and weak spots. Any one of the books can be read in any other, since Kunstler always fills in background, and all have the same basic appeal: illustrating to us what the problems of the future may be, and offering hope that people are resilient enough to find ways to rise to the challenge. The result is a story seemingly set in the 18th century, but with odds bits of our world integrated into it: characters make a distant trek to Albany over the broken state highway, through the remains of old strip malls and decaying suburban homes, both of which have been stripped for usable materials. The main problem in this being a believable depiction of ‘the future’ is the way past culture re-appears: as I commented in either the World Made by Hand or Witch of Hebron novels, it’s implausible that clothing stores would suddenly be called haberdasheries, or that old folk songs would be the only thing played on people’s fiddles. Is there no one trying to recreate “All About that Bass” on the piano? (…I hope not, but wouldn’t people try to play the music they knew, and not just ‘old-timey’ music?) Still, I like experiencing this world, and partially because of that strong historic flavor. It’s not for everyone, admittedly, but despite the apparent rout of peak oil theorizing, I still think a harder, leaner world may be in store for us, and this series helps to imagine what may be demanded of us.

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Songs of America

Posted on February 11, 2022 by smellincoffee

Song of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music that Made a Nation
© 2019 Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw
289 pages

Songs of America is a partial history of America, illustrated by its music, one celebrating the progress of Americans toward greater political participation. The narrative opens with the War for Independence and moves through fits and jerks to the early seventies, unfortunately ignoring several periods of American history along the way. Most notably, the period between Reconstruction and The Great War has to make do with the brief mention of suffragists, which is appalling given how important music was to the early labor movement, for instance. As a story, it’s fine; think of the narrative Obama used in his “yes we can” speech and you’ll have the idea. It’s hopeful and sees the American ideal expanding to include more people. Obama’s speech managed to be more comprehensive, though, despite being far shorter.This makes the book’s focus politics and the state, though, not the American people and our many music traditions — traditions that have brought different ethnic groups and their individual musical heritages together, fusing them into diverse and rapturous styles. That’s a huge oversight and makes the book far less interesting that it could have been.

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A History of the Future

Posted on February 10, 2022 by smellincoffee

A History of the Future
© 2014 Jim Kunstler
336 pages

Christmas has arrived in Union Grove,  and unlike their ancestors in days past – for whom the season was an exhausting, expensive enterprise involving frantic consumerism —  the people  of the village are enjoying a respite from their work.   The harvest season is done and the long winter has begun, and these residents of a world made by hand –  in a place that has slowly begun to regenerate after the collapse of the oil economy, epidemics, and blight – have each other.    But while Brother Jobe celebrates his tavern’s opening, and  a father welcomes his wandering son home, a voice cries in the darkness; a man and his son are dead.    

A History of the Future is third in Jim Kunstler’s “World Made by Hand” series, depicting a year in the life of the community of Union Grove, a  small village in upstate New York which survived the end of the old order.  The future is very much like the distant past – the 18th century, say, but with curious fragments of the old world floating around. In previous books we have seen how the city of Union Grove is slowly restoring its fortunes, going beyond mere survival. Now we learn a little what lies beyond upstate New York, as young Daniel Earle has returned from travels along the Erie Canal, with news from what was once the Deep South.    Unfortunately,  what we learn from Dan comes from telling, not showing;  at one point in his adventures he’s picked up by some remnant of the US Navy and given a full lecture on the collapse of nation-states across the globe and chaos at home, including a race war between white and black ethno-states in the old Midwest and Deep South.  Kunstler’s depiction of Appalachia is worse than stereotypical, with no connection whatever to the region’s character or problems. I was surprised by the lack of imagination, frankly, and the depiction was too cartoonish to be offensive. That made the Union Grove thread, with its focus on the need for lawful order even amid stressful times, carry more of the weight of the book than intended.  Dan’s adventures, which should be exciting and revealing, are more….tedious and ridiculous, culminating in his half-hardheartedly strangling some mix of Dolly Parton and Adolf Hitler while they’re in the throes of passion. (Women are….weird in this book. If they appear for more than two pages, they’re absolutely bonkers.)

A History of the Future is not a great novel, and definitely not one of the better World Made Hand novels. Those who enjoy reading Kunstler’s commentary on the meaningless of modernity and the insulting waste of resources that is modern development will find it here, woven into the fiction; this series exists more as an illustration of what might happen than because there’s a story that needs to be told. That said, I will be finishing the series….mostly because I found a used copy of the fourth book!

Related:
A World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron, the ‘summer’ and ‘autumn’ titles in this series.
Lucifer’s Hammer, Larry Niven. Another ‘end of the world’ type book, this one based on an asteroid strike.
One Second After, William Forschten. Another end-of-world book, this time following the aftermath of an EMP burst.

The first book still has a trailer on YouTube, which explains the premise of those who are curious:

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Selections from Rothbard’s “Betrayal of the American Right”

Posted on February 4, 2022 by smellincoffee

The history of America as a country is quite different from that of America as a State. In one case it is the drama of the pioneering conquest of the land, of the growth of wealth and the ways in which it was used … and the carrying out of spiritual ideals. … But as a State, its history is that of playing part in the world, making war, obstructing international trade … punishing those citizens whom society agrees are offensive, and collecting money to pay for it all.

“The simple truth is that our businessmen do not want a government that will let business alone. They want a government they can use.” – Ed Abbey

“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally [as Mencken clearly was not] he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. . . .” – H.L. Mencken

From As We Go Marching Along, John T. Flynn:

“The great and glamorous industry is here—the industry of militarism. And when the war is ended the country is going to be asked if it seriously wishes to demobilize an industry that can employ so many men, create so much national income when the nation is faced with the probability of vast unemployment in industry. All the well-known arguments, used so long and so successfully in Europe … will be dusted off—America with her high purposes of world regeneration must have the power to back up her magnificent ideals; America cannot afford to grow soft, and the Army and Navy must be continued on a vast scale to toughen the moral and physical sinews of our youth; America dare not live in a world of gangsters and aggressors without keeping her full power mustered … and above and below and all around these sentiments will be the sinister allurement of the perpetuation of the great industry which can never know a depression because it will have but one customer—the American government to whose pocket there is no bottom. ” – John T. Flynn, 1944

“Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans … who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up … and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy. ” – John T Flynn, 1944.

Frank Chodorov, praising in his analysis a pamphlet issued by the National Council Against Conscription, wrote that “the State cannot intervene in the economic affairs of society without building up its coercive machinery, and that, after all, is militarism. Power is the correlative of politics.”

“In previous years, he added, it was assumed that the function of the Congress was to speak for the American people. But now   it is the President, standing at the head of the Executive Government, who says: ‘I speak for the people’ or ‘I have a mandate from the people.’ . . Now much more than Congress, the President acts directly upon the emotions and passions of the people to influence their thinking. As he controls Executive Government, so he controls the largest propaganda machine in the world. The Congress has no propaganda apparatus at all and continually finds itself under pressure from the people who have been moved for or against something by the ideas and thought material broadcast in the land by the administrative bureaus in Washington.” – Garet Garrett

“The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization. Its good intentions were peace, law and order. The Spanish Empire added salvation. The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man’s burden. We have added freedom and democracy. Yet the more that may be added to it the more it is the same language still. A language of power.” – Garet Garrett

“As Kolko pointed out, all the various measures of federal regulation and welfare statism, beginning in the Progressive period, that Left and Right alike have always believed to be a mass movement against Big Business, are not only backed to the hilt by Big Business at the present time, but were originated by it for the very purpose of shifting from a free market to a cartelized economy. Under the guise of regulations ‘against monopoly’ and ‘for the public welfare.’ Big Business has succeeded in granting itself cartels and privileges through the use of government.”

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Brave New Home

Posted on February 3, 2022 by smellincoffee

Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing
© 2020 Diane Lind
272 pages

Prior to the 20th century, Americans enjoyed the same rich diversity of housing options as anyone else: detached houses of varying sizes, granny flats, boarding houses, rented rooms, and apartment hotels only begin the list. By the mid-20th century, however, American cities were hard at work creating housing shortages for the future, by restricting residential development to either sprawling acres of single homes, or the odd apartment tower. As we move deeper into the 21st century, Diane Lind posits that the state-mandated tyranny of detached homes is being broken and that alternative housing options are making a comeback.  

Lind begins with a quick and serviceable history of American housing, which covers how single-family dwellings became virtually the only permissible residential development allowed in the United States. Unsurprisingly for a contemporary author, she places heavy emphasis on racial drama, with less-charged economic and environmental factors taking a distant backseat. (Suburban Nation, Crabgrass Frontier, etc offer more detailed and less politicized analyses of the same trend.) More constructively, she demonstrates that the nuclear family, consisting of one couple and their children in a detached home, only became the norm as the 20th century opened, driven by both the state’s desire to expand homeownership, reform groups’ attempt to clean cities up by attacking shared living arrangements, and the shift of the American economy from agriculture to industry.  

Social factors today are reversing that shift. Young people are entering adulthood already laden with debt baggage, and are delaying starting families, often well into their thirties. They  often have neither the means nor the desire to buy a house in the suburbs — and even if they did, the large cities they prefer to live near all have enormous housing shortfalls (sometimes thanks to the city government itself squelching development, in the case of San Francisco). There’s a great deal of interest and energy in creating new ways to live, and the bulk of Lind’s book addresses three trends: co-living, accessory dwelling units, and multigenerational housing. She ends by arguing that housing should be reframed, and that housing and health policy should ruin together.

Two of the two trends are restorations of how people used to live before the suburban experiment, and allow people with different needs to serve one another: accessory dwelling units, which lumps approaches like garage apartments and tiny houses together, offer more affordable places to live for young people, while giving older landowners a source of income and companionship. Multigenerational homes are likwise mutually beneficial: not only are basic household costs shared, but the generations support one another: while Grandma is helping babysit the grands, her own children can likewise better monitor her health — and everyone benefits from companionship. While these revived approaches were created specifically to ease expense, Lind’s version of co-living is rather different. She addresses not young people living in homes together, but housing developments that were specifically created with a dorm-like plan in mind: small private living spaces, connected with more communal shared kitchens and living areas. These allow college grads to continue meeting interesting people and living in community, but are certainly not cheap: indeed, Lind writes that these young people are willing to pay a premium for the experience, which often includes doormen and planned recreation.

I greatly appreciated Lind’s emphasis on how our living spaces effect our total well-being, not just our financial standing: this is something I became aware of after reading Jim Kunstler’s Geography of Nowhere. The big flaw in Lind’s focus here is its emphasis on new developments: even when existing housing stock can easily be adapted to incorporate ADUs or multiple families, she devotes most of her focus to new construction that has multiple families in mind. The co-living chapter is the biggest offender here, because it’s more of a niche product , the dorms attractive to wealthy but single millennials. The problem with new developments is that by their nature they’re difficult to make affordable, since first-gen tenants are essentially helping pay for the building’s development, whereas tenants in later years are only covering maintenance and the landlord’s income. (Jane Jacobs wrote on the importance of old buildings for maintaining affordable stock.) Lind also emphasizes subsidies for making the dream of affordable housing happen, when zoning regs and state incentives were responsible for creating the housing dilemma in the first place. When bureaucrats are removed from the picture, industrious humans have a way of solving the problems at hand.

Related:
Not Just Bikes’ “The Houses That Can’t Be Built in America”, covering how zoning laws distort the market and reduce stock
It’s a Sprawl World After All: The Human Costs of Unplanned Growth, Douglas Morris.
Strong Towns articles on tackling housing crunches by allowing for ADUs, etc
Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in America, Paul Groth

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