""This is the most brilliant epitome of Manhattan ever written." --Mike Davis Every morning, the architect and writer Michael Sorkin walks from his apartment in Greenwich Village to his office in Tribeca. Unlike most commuters, Sorkin isn't in a hurry, and he doesn't try to drown out his surroundings. Instead, he's always paying attention. As he descends the narrow stairs of his town house, Sorkin explains why New York doesn't have the grand stairwells so common in European apartment buildings. Stepping out onto his block, he imagines a better, more efficient, far less dirty way to dispose of garbage. As he crosses Canal Street, he remembers the mad proposals for tunnels, elevated highways, and mega-structures that threatened lower Manhattan and could have destroyed its urban fabric. Fifty years after Jane Jacobs's groundbreaking The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Sorkin's vision of city life is every bit as perceptive and fine-grained as that of Jacobs's classic. With important insights into history, architecture, and public policy, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan is an extraordinary, deeply personal look at a city undergoing--always undergoing--dramatic transformations"--

"A collection of essays--historical and personal--about the present and future of American cities Edited by Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb, City by City is a collection of essays--historical, personal, and somewhere in between--about the present and future of American cities. It sweeps from Gold Rush, Alaska, to Miami, Florida, encompassing cities large and small, growing and failing. These essays look closely at the forces--gentrification, underemployment, politics, culture, and crime--that shape urban life. They also tell the stories of citizens whose fortunes have risen or fallen with those of the cities they call home. A cross between Hunter S. Thompson, Studs Terkel, and the Great Depression-era WPA guides to each state in the Union, City by City carries this project of American storytelling up to the days of our own Great Recession"--