About the Author

Jane Jacobs was the legendary author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a work that has never gone out of print and that has transformed the disciplines of urban planning and city architecture. Her other major works include The Economy of Cities, Systems of Survival, and The Nature of Economies. She died in 2006.

Reviews

“Altogether magnificent . . . Probably no single thinker has done more in the last fifty years to transform our ideas about the nature of urban life.” —Chicago Tribune

“[With] piercing analysis, crystalline prose and [a] finely-honed sense of morality, Jacobs covers an amazing amount of ground.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Superb . . . Cobbling together a little urban anthropology, a little economic history, and a vast store of highly nuanced personal observations . . . Jacobs is an indispensable provocateur.” —Village Voice Literary Supplement

"Altogether magnificent . . . Probably no single thinker has done more in the last fifty years to transform our ideas about the nature of urban life." -Chicago Tribune

"[With] piercing analysis, crystalline prose and [a] finely-honed sense of morality, Jacobs covers an amazing amount of ground." -Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Superb . . . Cobbling together a little urban anthropology, a little economic history, and a vast store of highly nuanced personal observations . . . Jacobs is an indispensable provocateur." -Village Voice Literary Supplement

Written in the form of a Platonic dialogue between a Manhattan publisher and his party guests, Jacobs's often confusing inquiry posits that two contradictory ethical systems underpin the realms of work and politics. The ``commercial syndrome,'' prevalent in business, trade and science, fosters honesty and cooperation, encouraging people to be industrious and thrifty and to invest for productive purposes. The ``guardian syndrome,'' which holds sway over armies, police, government bureaucracies and commercial monopolies, instills obedience, respect for hierarchy, loyalty and fatalism. When either moral syndrome embraces functions inappropriate to it, contends Jacobs ( The Economy of Cities ), corruption ensues. She uses this simplistic schema to shed light on corporate merger manias, Pentagon waste, organized crime (a ``monstrous hybrid of the two systems'') and Sweden's welfare state. Urging a ``guardian-commercial symbiosis'' to combat force, fraud and greed, Jacobs cites pollution-cutting technologies and democratic access to business credit as provocative examples. (Dec.)