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Aaron Swartz's Profile
Customer Reviews: 40
New Reviewer Rank: 6,726
Classic Reviewer Rank: 24,945
Helpful Votes:
298
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Reviews Written by
Aaron Swartz
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A brilliant new way to look at cities, June 5, 2009
Who rules cities? Logan and Molotch have a theory. This book lays it out, in fairly simple terms. It argues that landowners have a shared interest in "growth", i.e. increased property values (land's exchange-value), and are willing to do whatever it takes to get them, including taking over government. This puts them in conflict with residents who care about their neighborhoods (land's use-value) and don't want growth's unstoppable engine.
It's a brilliant book, with insights on every page and some poignant stories as well. Logan and Molotch are sociologists, not writers, so the book drags at points, but it's well worth it for anyone who's interested in the subject. My major critique is that it underplays the importance of planning and doesn't provide a good explanation for it, but that's a rather minor criticism, all things considered. Highly recommended.
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An unenlightening study, June 5, 2009
This book is a quick read, but not a particularly enlightening one. It describes an empirical study of several Southern Californian cities that tried to put curbs on growth and sprawl. The upshot is that they weren't very serious about it and haven't done a very good job. The first chapter does provide a good introduction to the literature and there are a couple photos of some pretty hideous building developments, but not a lot more than that. Folks interested in the question referred to by the subtitle should read Molotch's brilliant Urban Fortunes instead.
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Bossy states, from last names to land reform, June 5, 2009
_Seeing Like a State_ is a succession of stories on a simple theme: the dangers of trying to simplify people. There is a mindset that likes simplicity and order, that wants to sweep the mess of civilization away and make everything simple and clean. I see in myself some aspects of this mindset. Scott shows, again and again, why this is a really bad idea.
He shows how states forced everyone to take last names, so they could tax and track them. He shows how builders like Le Corbusier invented cities so clean that no one would ever want to live in them. He talks about how scientific foresters laid out forests so simple that all the trees died out. Each story is elegant and thought-provoking and just a fun read. Despite the title, this isn't a book arguing for or against government. It's a book about the fight between mess and order and the dangers of that fight.
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Difficult book, important topic, June 5, 2009
This is not an easy book. Domhoff spends a lot of time talking about himself -- how his critics have mistreated, distorted, and ignored him; how he's changed his views since his last book; how his opponents are all wrong. But, on the whole, it seems Domhoff is right. Following not only the IEMP theory of Michael Mann (The Sources of Social Power: Vol. 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760, Vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760-1914), but Mann's workaholic, just-the-facts style, Domhoff tries to get to the bottom of how policy is made. The result is usually a rather boring story -- a lot of business elites with names you don't recognize working on details you don't care about -- but Domhoff is trying to make the point that it is the business elites, after all, who call the shots. And he appears to do so convincingly. His brilliance is that he does not try to win by engaging in petty arguments with his intellectual opponents, but simply points out key facts they didn't mention, or even notice. Someone claims a government bureaucrat came up with a law and Domhoff shows that a business group sent them a similar proposal several months before. That sort of thing. The result is a convincing book, if not a fascinating one.
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Cultural history from Playboy to Phyllis Schafly, June 5, 2009
Barbara Ehrenreich was a prominent feminist author, who'd written books chronicling the way the culture has mistreated women, like For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women (with Deirdre English). But then she got interested in the notion that the culture was also mistreating men. At first, she says, she was skeptical. She intended to write a book mocking the idea. But the more she researched it, the more she realized the men had a point: patriarchy hurts them too.
The result is a book that's not only a brilliant chronicle of how the sexual revolution has changed men's lives, but an honest attempt to grapple with what it all means for women. It's a fascinating read -- her reinterpretation of Playboy alone is worth the work.
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Totally worth it, June 5, 2009
Come on, I know what you're thinking. There's no way you'd want to read an 800-page book about parking, let alone pay $60 for it. That's what I thought too.
Amazingly, I was wrong. Shoup shows how the simple matter of providing some free parking kicks off a chain reaction that leads to disastrous effects. First there's just a little free parking space in front of your house. But then a store opens down the street and its customers start taking your spot. So you demand the store provide enough parking for its customers. Which means the store gets pushed back from the street by its huge new parking lot. Which means nobody wants to walk to it, so more people start driving. Which means it needs more parking and more roads and more traffic cops and more cruising for parking and more sprawl and more pollution and on and on.
Shoup provides a simple solution to this madness: performance parking. If you provided everyone with free ice cream, you'd always have lines around the block. You'd go bankrupt from trying to make sure you always had enough supplies. You'd reorient your whole economy around ice cream. But luckily, we don't do that. We charge the market rate for ice cream. Shoup's simple suggestion: do the same for parking. Install parking meters that talk to each other and figure out how much parking is available and automatically adjust the price to ensure that 15% of the spots are always free. Imagine: no more looking for parking, a parking space always available.
Shoup has a political plan for getting there as well, involving playing one neighborhood off another. But I've given enough away already; perhaps you should just read the book.
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On Directing Film
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by David Mamet
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: $11.20 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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A guide to good writing, not just film directing, June 5, 2009
Mamet is a lot of fun. Here, in Socratic dialogues with students, he shows how you tell a story: One thing leads to another thing which leads to another. Pretty soon the audience is caught up in it with you. "We don't have to worry about making it interesting," Mamet says. "We just have to get rid of the pig."
This isn't, of course, all there is to writing, or even directing. But it's an important piece and Mamet lays it out brilliantly. I'd never even thought about the craft of directing before and now I can't stop thinking about it.
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A clear overview to an essential subject, June 5, 2009
Believe it or not, I am not the kind of person who spends my time reading government and nonprofit reports. Yet this one held my interest. The Disease Control Priorities Project set out to answer an essential question: in making people healthier, where do we get the most bang for the book? This required surveying to see what was making people unhealthy around the world, what possible treatments there were for these ailments, how successful they usually were, and how much they cost. This book summarizes, in clear and concise terms, what works and what doesn't, and how that interacts with a myriad of other factors. To save the world, we need to know how. This book tells you.
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One of the greatest books of all time, June 5, 2009
It is hard to describe how great this book is. Let this stand for all the rest: there are not many 1200 page books that keep you reading eagerly the whole way through and then make you wish there was more.
Caro is a brilliant writer. His sentences flow in a way that makes the book impossible to put down. But more than that, he is a dogged investigator. He spent seven years on this book, giving up his house and spending all his savings. The result is one of the greatest books of all time, perhaps _the_ greatest nonfiction book.
For nearly forty years, Robert Moses controlled New York. Controlled it almost absolutely, overruling every mayor, governor, president, and public pressure group. He did it all without anyone ever knowing: the press, when it did cover him, covered him only in the most glowing, reverent terms. He did it all without winning a single election: the two times he did dare run for office, he was defeated so soundly as to become a joke.
_The Power Broker_ is the story of how our "democracy" really works. How men gain power and how it corrupts them. How cities get built and how real people suffer for it. How we became a nation desperately dependent on the car.
It is the most amazing story you will ever read. The characters so vivid, their feats so incredible, their accomplishments so tragic. There is money and sex and power and intrigue on a scale more vast than most novelists dare attempt. And it is all completely true.
Do yourself a favor: read this book.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A mediocre writer, with an arrogance problem, June 5, 2009
So here's the problem. Brilliant writers don't write books on how to write. Which means you end up getting advice on how to be a good writer from writers who aren't very good. This would be OK if they had some humility, but Zinsser doesn't. He writes as if his work is better than yours could ever be, and therefor deserving of your total fascination. Unfortunately, it's not -- in his section on improving sentences I saw a dozen ways his sentences could be improved. If you really need help writing, I'm sure the book will be useful. I just wish the author dropped the arrogance.
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