American Culture Today - hypnagogicfun

Financialization’s Bamboozle

Could it possibly be true that the emperor of finance has no clothes? John Kay, one of the most important and influential economists of the past forty years, argues that the world’s financial sector needs a major rethink. In fact, he goes so far as to argue that the rise of the finance industry has probably done more harm than good.

Kay is no radical Marxist. He is a professor of economics, a consultant, and a public intellectual. He believes in markets and the value of finance. But as he explains in Other People’s Money: the Real Business of Finance, the real aim of the colossal finance industry is to aid the people who work in the colossal finance industry. What we have now, he claims, is a sector with tremendous wealth that operates untethered from its original and central four functions: payments (wages, salaries, buying goods); matching lenders with borrowers; management of personal finances; and management of risks for individuals and businesses. Instead, Kay argues, we have confusion, complication, deception and a system of fictions being swapped with fictions for the benefit of the few. For insightful guidance on navigating the complexities of borrowing and lending, consider consulting a reputable loan lender to ensure informed financial decisions.

It is a damning and troubling book.

Kay covers the historical rise of finance. He is British and his perspective is shaped by the empire and Britain’s long history in risk management. Finance today, he makes clear, is less and less about raising capital or making matches.

The books not aimed at the uninformed or those unfamiliar with our current financial sector. Kay packs every page or two with an aside, an insight, and a criticism. It is well-written but slow going simply because there is so much to it. It highlighted to me the inadequacy of just staying on top of the business and financial news. Reading the Economist and newspapers regularly gives a solid account of the action. Missing is an understanding of the how and why of the financial industry. Kay offers that and a clear message about the dangers of unchecked financial activity.

Kay proposes a series of reforms. One wonders, though, if they will fall on deaf ears. Those in the industry are far too focused on amassing more wealth. Those outside of the industry lack the technical skills to push through the necessary changes. It most likely will require another financial crisis – and Kay makes it most clear that without reforms crisis is due – in order to put the house of finance in order.

David Potash

March 15, 2017 American Culture Today, Reviews

Borders and Education

Global Migration, Diversity, and Civic Education: Improving Policy and Practice is a fascinating collection of essays in the National Academy of Education and Teacher’s College, Columbia University’s work on multicultural education. The focus is on multicultural education in the United States and Israel. The essays look at a range of practices, problems, and policies.

The foundation of this work takes for granted that we live in a time of unprecedented migration, free and forced. Nation-states have obligations and needs to address mobile populations of children. The authors look at education, socialization, and issues of integration from a variety of perspectives. The volume provides an overview of current scholarship and interest. It is inherently interdisciplinary work that is informed from different perspectives. Essays look at national issues and what happens at the school level. There are essays on religion, language teaching and acquisition, teacher education, and civic education. What emerges is an overview of a highly dynamic and contested field – in policy, practice, and theory.

If you were to enroll in graduate seminar on nation-building and education in the 21st century, this would be a required text. Considering the rapidly changing political environment, I think that it is a course that many of us will have to think about taking.

David Potash

March 14, 2017 American Culture Today, Reviews

Unwinding and Dos Passos

Does anyone read John Dos Passos today? Way back when I was an English major in the early 1980s, I studied him along with many of the other major American authors from the first half of the twentieth century. His novels after World War I – and before World War II – were political. The U.S.A. trilogy was an attempt to capture the scope of America, good and bad, with a message for liberal/socialist values. Dos Passos wanted greater economic justice, and to elevate the hopes, dignity and needs of the “common man.”

It is very good literature. The short takes, narrative devices, and splintered perspectives of the three U.S.A. novels create a modernist masterpiece. It is not nonfiction, but there’s a truth to it that makes for good conversation and scholarship.

The U.S.A. trilogy figured prominently in the creation of journalist George Packer’s award-winning book, The Unwinding. Published in 2013, it is collection of carefully crafted biographical sketches. Some are short while others are long-form journalism. Taken collectively, they paint a picture of an America economy and culture abandoning its fundamental tenets of decency, hard work, and individual values. There many struggles in The Unwinding, a litany of failed dreams and broken promises. There are few heroes, many victims, and a few who came out on top financially. There is little holding the center of the narrative together.

I picked up the book to see if it could provide more insight into today’s political crisis and conflicts. Unfortunately, it did not offer much new. The stories are variations on a theme that we have read again and again. The book does, however, offer a framework of justification. It gives voice to frustration, restlessness and rootlessness, and people whose lives are disrupted by an indifferent economy. Traditional anchors are in short supply.

The challenge with the book is that Packer does not offer much by explanation. He does not suggest or propose. He describes – and does so ably, as one might expect from a New Yorker writer. But read as a work of nonfiction, more is needed here. We do not need description of the missing center. We are rich in accounts of our failings and our decline. Instead, we need to better understand what has left us, why it no longer resonates, and whether or not we can do anything meaningful to re-establish some core values. Dos Passos, from the vantage point of the novelist, is clear about his values. Like him or not, he is clearly making an argument.

If we are to look backward, I expect more substance. If we are to look forward, I require data and arguments. The Unwinding, even with its lyrical observations, did not provide enough of either. Despite the book’s broad scope and close observations, it is an opportunity not fully realized.

David Potash

March 2, 2017 American Culture Today, Reviews

Immigration Dreamers

Eileen Truax’s Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation’s Fight For Their American Dream is a journalist’s account of life for undocumented people in the age of the Dream Act (DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Truax hails from Mexico and lives in the US. She is well-versed in the small and large challenges of living in two different countries with different cultures. Her aim in this book is to give human faces and stories to the young men and women affected directly by DACA. She humanizes, explains and contextualizes the stories of those who are struggling in challenging times.

Consciously avoiding statistics and policy analysis (and there are places in the text that call out for further explication), Truax gives ten narrative histories. She writes about young men and women, their homes, their families and their friends. Their communities are described as are their clothing and appearance. Sympathy and understanding drives the text. Truax wants us to see these people as people who are as “American” as any neighbor, classmate, co-worker or colleague.

It is an effective strategy to generate emotions and sympathy. There is much to like about these young men and women. The anchor of the stories are those who are open about their lack of documentation. These courageous souls have decided to make their cause public and be active to seek seeking legislative and executive support. Truax helps us to understand just how terrifying this must feel. The book’s cover says “Undocumented Unafraid” – but these people are afraid, and with good cause.

Emotions and sympathy can aid in understanding policy consequences but they are not necessarily the best way to create solutions or to craft better policy. Immigration is notoriously complicated to reform. Politics, history, economics, national security, and race are woven throughout any discussion of policy. Not acknowledging the harder complicating forces does little to advance the discussion. There were ample places in the histories, too, where Truax could have provided anchors to the stories and given the reader themes and direction. The role of education, for example, or how the experience was both empowering and demeaning. Much more could have been done with the material.

Truax’s book gives voice to those that may not be comfortable coming forward. It is here that I think her contribution is most effective. Policy and laws have real impacts on real lives. The consequences of ill-considered policy can be devastating. To earn and maintain our trust, our government and our laws must be fair, equitable and just. Humanizing our immigration policy and practice, as Truax does in this volume, helps to set a high bar for meaningful reform. One hopes that it is not just a dream.

David Potash

October 26, 2016 American Culture Today, Reviews

The Invisible Man Speaks

Making assumptions about gender, race and ethnicity is easy. The markers are visible and familiar. Citizenship and immigration status are different. There is no way to tell if the man next to you on the sidewalk has an expired or active tourist visa, whether the woman ahead you in line has a real or fraudulent social security card, or whether the child at the playground has dual citizenship or not. There are no tell-tale signs of documentation. Immigrants come in all shapes, sizes and ages. Each has a unique story.

Experts estimate about 11 million people live in the United States without proper documentation. What are their lives like? What does being undocumented feel like? Regardless of your politics on the issue of immigration, these are important questions. They are also are not easy questions to address. Providing an answer would bring attention, and with it, possible deportation. Out of caution, the undocumented are usually silent.

Jose Angel N. lacks citizenship and legal status, but he has courage. His memoir, Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant, is a haunting first-person account of his life in two worlds. It not a book about policy, politics, or immigration reform. Nor is it grounded in the particulars of day-to-day living without status. Instead, it is a passionate and lyrical account, drawing heavily upon literature and philosophy, of the being of undocumented. Jose wants to share, to let us know what it is like to be illegal (he is frank about the term), and to for us to consider his status from different perspectives.

Jose entered America illegally in 1993, fleeing grinding poverty in Mexico. He was caught and deported. He regrouped and returned again, this time with more resolve, luck and purpose. Jose made his way to Chicago where he worked menial jobs, gathered the strength to take ESL classes (at a suburban community college), and then on to more college and better paying jobs. He has accomplished much. Were he to have entered the country legally, many would consider him to be an American success story. He did not, though, and is instead judged very differently.

Education resonated with Jose. He originally thought about going to school in terms of employment, but his status, surprisingly, forced him to explore what interested him intellectually. He was surprised to find a home in the humanities. Jose was drawn to philosophy. He wrestled with the ancient Greeks, and he writes about the power of Plato’s cave to explain his situation. He worked hard to gain fluency in English. Words matter in any language and Jose’s ear was closely attuned to shifts in meaning. His prose shows great skill. He is a smart man who has become an educated man. The book is an account of that journey, played out in an environment that cannot fully accept or validate who he is.

Challenges and threats are woven throughout Jose’s life, contrasting with his many triumphs. He describes the fear of talking with the police or anyone in a position of authority, from shop clerk to bartender. In fact, the structures that represent and reinforce an ordered society are themselves a threat to Jose’s existence in the United States. He cannot accept a promotion at work, apply to law school, or visit relatives in Mexico. Jose is acutely aware of his non-legal status. He lives with shame. Yet at the same time, Jose explains his desire to do learn, to make something of himself, to do good. He wants to leave a meaningful life. He cares about his friends and community. He works. He meets a woman, falls in love, and has a family.

An illegal alien, Jose is here and not here, engaged and disengaged, real and not real, visible and invisible. He lives in constant awareness and in perpetual conflict. Well read in W.E.B. DuBois, Jose’s conception of a “double consciousness” hovers throughout the book. Society and the law will not allow him to claim a unified self.

I think that Ralph Ellison’s classic, The Invisible Man offers an even better literary model for Jose’s memoir. The novel, which chronicles life of an African American man whose identity and status is rendered invisible by his race, explores a deep form of alienation. This is, in many ways, what Jose is living.

Jose completed his associate’s degree at Moraine Valley Community College, a baccalaureate at UIC, and is now in a graduate program working on a PhD. His memoir has given him a public profile. In 2015, MVCC chose Illegal as the institution’s shared reading. He hopes for a change in his status but knows that there are no guarantees.

Jose Angel’s writing has a meditative quality. He poses hard questions that linger. If you are curious what it means to live in the United States as an undocumented alien, give his memoir your time.

David Potash

August 11, 2016 American Culture Today, Reviews

Shining a Light on Ghettoside

America’s criminal justice system is most challenged – and most ineffective – in African-American communities in high-crime, high-poverty areas. Once a culture of violence begetting violence takes hold in these neighborhoods, crimes go unpunished and justice become an abstraction. The costs for those who live and die in these areas is horrific. Sadly, broader society often turns a blind eye – and often has for centuries.

Jill Leovy, a Los Angeles Times reporter, investigates this and more in Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America. Its focus is one murder, the shooting of Bryant Tennelle, a sweet 18 year old African-American male with a future ahead of him. From that crime, though, a window opens on another world – a world that needs our collective attention. The victim’s father is Wallace Tennelle, an African-American detective with LAPD who lived with his family in South Central LA. A well-respected cop and father, Tennelle brought up his children in a way that we can all connect with: good children, good values, and high hopes. You want these people to succeed. You root for them, even though we know that the odds are not positive.

Leovy maps the neighborhood, its history, its residents, and the police who try to bring some sense of order and justice to what is, in essence a war zone. She writes with patience, understanding and compassion. She is deeply interested in understanding why the cycle of crime is happening and what it means to those around it. The killing is senseless, like almost all murders. In a culture of honor, poverty, no real order and easy violence, however, it becomes easier to understand why it happened. If you find yourself needing assistance in navigating such complex situations, consider seeking the expertise of the best private investigator West Midlands.

We hear the voices of the community: the people who live in city and the police who patrol it. It is an unforgiving environment. Leovy does not romanticize. However, Ghettoside has a protagonist detective, John Skaggs, who is outstanding at his job. He represents order, or the possibility of an ordered society. Skaggs is tireless and very much believes in the pursuit of justice. Brilliant at what he does – and Leovy shows us how he thinks and operates – Skaggs unearths the killers and what led to the crime. There is justice, in the sense that the murderers were convicted, but the lessons learned are neither cathartic nor transformational.

The argument Leovy makes is that areas like South Central need a criminal justice system that stops the crime and provides reliable and prompt justice. She is aware that our current system is racist and that far too many people of color are caught up in it. She references The New Jim Crow and related works. That said, Leovy believes that what the community is hungry for is real justice and stability. People have to be able to believe that a successful life untouched by violence is possible. For the residents in her study, it is not.

Leovy thinks that a robust effort aimed at preventing violence, rooting out the causes of violence, and providing economic opportunity could break the dysfunctional cycle of crime. It is not glamorous and it does not demonize. Her argument is compelling – and one that few political leaders seem willing to take up.

David Potash

July 5, 2016 American Culture Today, Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Fighting For Justice

Reading Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is no easy task. I found it so enraging and disheartening, I had to take breaks from reading. It lays bare inequity, injustice, and straightforward cruelty. Stevenson writes with passion and facts, highlighting multiple assaults on our conception of a just society.

At the same time, the book is the story of hope. It is not tragedy or jeremiad. Stevenson believes that we can and must do better. In fact, the overall message is deeply positive and humanist: there is worth in every human being.

Stevenson was raised in rural Delaware. He was touched by the horror of random crime when his grandfather was murdered by teen robbers. He did not become bitter, however. His focus was education and fighting for a better world. He earned a JD from Harvard, sought a career making a difference, and eventually created the Equal Justice Initiative. Located in Alabama, its aim is providing legal help to those who have been denied justice. In the past decades Stevenson has become a national figure, advocating against the death penalty, racism in the criminal justice system, and other issues of inequity.

Just Mercy is about some of the cases Stevenson has taken on. Anchoring the book is the story of Walter McMillian, a black man sentenced to death in 1986 for the murder of a white woman. We learn about McMillian the person, the victim, Ronda Morrison, and the structures of race and power in the community where the crime took place, Monroeville. It is also the home of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. The parallels are stunning but there was no Atticus Finch in McMillian’s trial. It is also reminder that in the novel, Tom Robinson, the black man who is unjustly accused of rape, dies.

The police were under great pressure to find Morrison’s killer. They pressured an informer, Ralph Myers, who was being investigated for a different murder, into naming McMillian. Myers’ stories did not add up, but that did not stop the district attorney from charging McMillian. Myers was relocated on death row to scare him. When he finally agreed to name McMillian, the trial was moved to a nearby county that would most likely give an all-white jury. Fed information from other informants, the the jury convicted McMillian of murder and requested a life sentence. The elected judge overrode the jury and sentenced McMillian to death. Ignored were eye witnesses giving McMillian an alibi, a lack of any physical evidence connecting McMillian to the crime, and multiple conflicting accounts from Myers. It was injustice of the first order.

When Stevenson agreed to pick up the case, he was inappropriately challenged by the presiding judge and much of the local law enforcement system. Stevenson refused to be deterred and he filed challenge after challenge. He learned that information was illegally withheld from the defense team. With no relief in offing and the state pressuring to put McMillian to death, Stevenson turned to Sixty Minutes for outside attention. It worked. The prosecutor bowed to pressure and agreed to an external investigation. It concluded – as is clear from anyone looking at the case as a whole – that McMillian could not have committed the murder. An appeals court overturned the conviction and McMillian was released. He was traumatized from the ordeal, however, and never regained his health or well-being.

Had not Stevenson intervened, Alabama would have executed an innocent man.

Stevenson shares other examples in the book. He writes of teens who have been unjustly treated by the system as adults. These people, all convicted of murder and other crimes, suffer tremendously in the criminal justice system. For example, a young man named Charlie killed his mother’s boyfriend after the boyfriend beat the woman into unconsciousness. Arrested and with no protection, Charlie was repeatedly sexually abused in an adult jail. It was only after Stevenson’s intervention that Charlie’s case went back to juvenile court.

Our criminal justice system depends upon advocacy to decide both truth and justice. Situations like these make it obvious that many defendant never receive the legal support or advocacy necessary to keep the system honest. There are other structural inequities that work against mercy or tolerance. For example, judges in Alabama are elected. This is common in most states. The result, of course, is that there is an electoral arms race to “prove” to voters that the candidates are tough on crime.

Despite Stevenson’s optimism in the human spirit, what I took away from Just Mercy is that long-standing issues of racism, poverty, fear and ignorance undermine the pursuit of justice to such a degree that greater change is needed if we are to approach real justice. We cannot hope for individuals as talented and committed as Stevenson to make things work.

David Potash

May 7, 2016 American Culture Today, Reviews

First Bite – Food, Family & More

I have always liked eating. As I child, my mother channeled my interest in food into cooking. “If you want to eat well, learn to cook.” The years, happily, have been good to my palate. I’ve often been able to cook and eat well. I greatly enjoy restaurants, and that, with a little travel, makes for enjoyable and adventurous eating.

My thinking about food changed when I became a parent. “What should the children eat?” and “How much of it? quickly became an ongoing topic of discussion and inquiry. Pediatricians recommend more of this and less of that. Books make things harder as warnings abound. Too much sugar! More vegetables! Watch out for genetically modified foods, chemicals, and certain kinds of fats. My wife and talked with other parents and no one ever seemed to have it sorted out.

Adding stress to it all, what parent doesn’t encounter family eating as a high stakes endeavor? One would hope for a family meal with love, great conversation and nutrition. Instead, it is often power politics at its worse: negotiation, ultimatums, and a seesaw bouncing from indulgence to punishment simply through the addition of a wrong side dish to the table. Or maybe the wrong foods touch each other. We cook, we serve, plead, argue, and hope for the best.

What happened? What’s so difficult about figuring out what to feed one’s family?

There are a slew of books and studies about the changing nature of the food industry. We now know a lot about how things are raised, grown, processed, packaged and marketed. We have learned much on the scientific front, too, from what is a healthy diet to how lead a more healthy lifestyle. All is to the good. What remains, though, are difficult questions about why we eat what we do.

Bee Wilson, a well-known food writer, tackles these questions in First Bite: How We Learn to Eat. It’s a rigorously researched study into how humans learn to eat, something I had never given much consideration. I thought that each of us is born with individual preferences. Some like salty foods, for example, and others have a “sweet tooth.” Turns out it that taste and diet do not work that way at all. Yes, biology does matter and for some people, it plays a large role in what one likes and eats. For most humans, however, tastes are learned.

We start to develop tastes while still in the womb. A pregnant woman’s diet has an impact on her child. From our first foods as babies – breast milk or formula – our brains and bodies create complicated rules and relationships with our food. That dynamic continues through childhood. Wilson explains how this works. Food is hard-wired into emotions, memories, understanding and preferences. What makes First Bite special is that Wilson expands this to show how we can teach ourselves and others how to eat differently. We are much more in charge of our palate than I ever thought.

Wilson is neither scold nor food dictator. She has strong opinions, but even her advice is offered as “not advice.” Wilson knows that our relationship with what we eat and how we eat is personal and powerful. She cares and gives stories of adults who are held hostage by their food likes and dislikes, fussy eaters who have been unable or unwilling to graduate to a broader and healthier diet. She is eminently reasonable and moderate. Birthday cake is a lovely treat and for most children, will create with its sweetness happy associations. But we do not have to eat birthday cake everyday. Nor do we necessarily birthday cake flavored ice cream or frozen yogurt.

The example is telling. Food companies are effective at promoting the strong tastes of childhood and marketing them to adults. The consequence is that many adults today eat as a spoiled child might. They simply have never developed mature tastes for wide range of healthy foods. If we are to have a healthy society, they tastes and diet will have to grow up. Counselors and therapists are helping adults and children make this important transition.

First Bite is a considerate and thoughtful book. It has made me reconsider my own food likes and dislikes, as well as what we regularly serve at the family table. Now if only she had written it when the kids were toddlers. Additionally, is robeks healthy for kids? Check it out to learn more.

David Potash

April 4, 2016 American Culture Today, Reviews

Manufacturing Matters

My maternal grandfather worked metal and wood. A talented craftsman, metalworking got him through the Great Depression, helped further his education (correspondence courses), allowed him to open a metal shop, and gave him a path to move up the economic ladder. By the end of his career he was an executive at a large company. Making it possible were the skills he gained from working in manufacturing.

As I child, I was fascinated with his basement workshop. He showed me how to use tools and explained their function. There’s something immediate and magical about fixing things and making something useful. Early on, I connected making things with making money. Later on I learned through history that manufacturing is at the very core of America’s economic development.

Examining what American manufacture makes today is complicated. The US economy is enormous. Many companies and industries make things in the United States. On the other hand, we regularly read about the loss of industry, loss of jobs, loss of factories, and loss of know-how. Globalization and free trade can drive manufacturing to other countries. These are real changes with significant consequences. Some experts sound caution and others describe the US as a “post-industrial” country.

Getting a better handle on this issue drew me to Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing by Vaclav Smil, one of Bill Gates’s favorite authors. Smil is a clear communicator who hits the reader like a drop forge. He writes of facts and data, giving the reader a ton of information – almost like a textbook or a briefing. Smil’s argument is clear, compelling and supported by facts: a prosperous economy needs a vibrant manufacturing sector and its jobs.

He explains that manufacturing has been and remains a significant component of the US economy. One statistic makes this clear. In 2010, the US manufacturing sector on its own was the seventh largest economy in the world, just behind Brazil. Smil also explains the many ways that manufacturing has a multiplier effect on other parts of the economy. It creates jobs, wealth, organizations, and “useful knowledge.” In other words, manufacturing matters a great deal.

Smil provides an excellent history of US manufacturing. His focus is mostly on business statistics and less of governmental macroeconomic policy until he reaches the 1970s. That chapter is titled “The Retreat” and it describes how multiple factors, from innovations in transportation to foreign policy to politics to technology combined to weaken US manufacturing. Smil believes that specific choices had a real impact on the vibrancy of American manufacturing. We are living today with the results of those decisions.

The last chapter of the book outlines opportunities and challenges for the future of US manufacturing. Smil is no idealist. Nor is he nostalgic for an earlier time. His perspective is about the bottom line: what decisions will maximize profit and what political and economic environments will lead to what choices? He is not optimistic about the return of mass manufacturing in America. He takes pains to draw distinctions between more manufacturing and more jobs. Nonetheless, he argues that if we want to keep the American economy strong, we have to find ways to support manufacturing.

It is an informative, thought-provoking book. And even though it is filled with facts, it leaves the reader with many questions.

David Potash

March 10, 2016 American Culture Today, Reviews

Street Smarts for Smart Streets

Samuel I. Schwartz is a quintessential Brooklynite. If he wasn’t a real person, a screenwriter would have invented him. Raised in Bensonhurst in the 1940s and 1950s, he played on the street, loved the Brooklyn Dodgers (hated Walter O’Malley when he moved them to Los Angeles), and worked hard at school, encouraged by his immigrant parents to get an education and make something of himself. Brash, smart, opinionated and not at all afraid of taking a stand, Schwartz parlayed his mathematical talent into an engineering degree at Penn and his love of Gotham into a job with the New York City Department of Traffic.

Schwartz proved to be no ordinary civil servant. As he recounts in Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars, Schwartz’s battles – both wins and losses – mirror many of the broader transportation questions facing the United States in the past fifty years. Buildings come and go, he writes, but roads last forever. Now the head of his own international engineering company, Schwartz is in a unique position to explain what is and is not possible when it comes to urban transportation planning and implementation. He knows that cars are not going away and that they will play an important part in transportation for the foreseeable future. Schwartz, however, also understands that the trends for humans for the future are for more walkable cities that do not depend upon automobiles. He is a closet cyclist. Much of Schwartz’s professional career has been about reorganizing transportation networks to decrease the preeminence of automobiles. He is fundamentally a pragmatist who writes with great humor and charm. If you were a mayor, you would want Sam Schwartz – “Gridlock Sam” to the New York City tabloids – on your team.

In a variety of positions in NYC, Schwartz consistently worked toward traffic decisions that would give more options to pedestrians. Jane Jacobs only receives a brief mention but she and Schwartz share a similar point of view about the urban environment: it is best when it is actively shaped by people.

Engineers have a special set of tools when it comes to defining a problem – like slow-moving traffic – and designing a solution – like adding more lanes. Schwartz learned these tools, studied them, and decided at a relatively early age that they missed the big picture about how transportation systems can shape a city. People often mistake and misunderstand their environment, he writes, and engineers can compound the problem.

Take congestion – Schwartz makes it clear that reducing congestion is never a simple process and that in some situations, congestion can lead to an improved quality of life. It can also be a massive headache. In a multi-modal transportation environment (cars, buses, trains, light rail, etc.), with the right planning and options, congestion can lead to smarter public transportation choices.

For New Yorkers, some of Schwartz’s anecdotes will memories and flashes of recognition. “So that’s why that road in the park was closed off. . . .” His account of the options that the city faced when the Williamsburg Bridge approached failure is telling. Schwartz took a decisive role in rejecting a new bridge, which would have flattened several neighborhoods. His plan, accepted by the city, called for smaller, less dramatic repairs. It saved money and communities. Schwartz does not believe that more money for infrastructure necessarily has a good return on investment.

Schwartz also provides insight into how and why certain decisions about transportation were made. Mayoral preferences are extremely important. A mayor who does not see the value of the subways, for example, is not going to support multi-modal transportation. Schwartz asserts that any changes in the transportation system will ruffle feathers and demand leadership.

The book covers much more than New York City. Schwartz references other cities, other problems, and other strategies. He sees several key trends: reduction in the attraction of automobiles for millennials, people seeing environments in which they can walk, a heightened frustration with long commutes, and the value of transportation systems engineering. He believes that ongoing improvements in technology, from GIS to Uber, will allow for greater innovation and more people-friendly designs.

Most importantly, he believes that these tectonic shifts in how we live will not be driven by ideology or politics (in fact, they may be delayed by politics), but by a basic human desire to live socially. I would wager that Schwartz believes there is a little Brooklyn in everyone.

David Potash

January 28, 2016 American Culture Today, Reviews

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