This book is a study on how large cities succeed or fail and why. It is also an attack on orthodox city planning (orthodox in the 1960’s that is), especially the tendency to create large housing projects.
The book is wonderful. Jacobs is a penetrating writer and her prose is marvelous. Just reading her descriptions of successful and lively city streets makes me want to live in a big city.
With great wit, erudition, and more than a smattering of anger and outrage, Wheen defends the values and ideas of the Enlightenment against the mystical and obscurantist encroachments by post-modernism, fundamentalism, creationism, middle-way liberals, and neo-conservatives.
Diamond explores various striking aspects of human beings, as distinct from other animals, including fun sex, drug abuse, language, tool use, and genocide.
He identifies precursors of these traits in other species and meditates on the future of our own.
A good introduction to the new web standards (XHTML & CSS), why you should use them in your websites, and how you can get started. Zeldman is an entertaining writer, though he sometimes overbears when it comes to pressing the case for standards. Perhaps his primary audience (web designers used to hacky html) need this sort of jackhammer treatment.
Anyway, after reading this book I’m looking forward to redesigning my site.
Part of the Zone diet involves determining the ‘block count’ of protein, carbohydrate, and fat in your food. This book is an index of the block counts for various kinds of food. I don’t use it, though, as I mainly just rely on estimation. Basically a waste of money unless you’re really into this sort of thing.
A legal history of Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trials. This book is far more gripping than the subject matter might indicate. The authors document the series of misdemeanor obscenity trials which Lenny Bruce had to endure and which, arguably, contributed to his untimely death.
Bruce emerges from the book as a complex iconoclast hounded mercilessly by the authorities for daring to break cultural and religious taboos. Recommended.
A CD included with the book contains recordings of Bruce’s bits, interviews with other comedians, and some of Bruce’s secret recordings of his own trials. Just listening to a few of his bits makes me wish I could have seen him in person – he must have been an amazing performer.
Lenny Bruce’s autobiography is filled with fascinating accounts of his strange life and with his unique brand of pointed social commentary. Included are some of the court trials he was forced to endure, though he tends to brush over his drug problems which were far more real than he acknowledges.
