A great read, and wonderful capstone to a great podcast. ( )

A great read, and wonderful capstone to a great podcast. ( )

I have always found Kunstler to be on the edge of amazing. His writing and talks can come off a little too elitist in the way of telling people what to do. I often shy away from arguments that are heavily urban based, but Kunstler helps to provide a little bridge to gulf the issues.

I had previously read some of The Long Emergency and I did not finish it because it was too extreme. It seemed to concentrate on rant language as an art form.

In this one the more analytical sections are more useful, shorter, more concise. The autobiographical sections are interesting. But in general it is scattered.

I note that as of today every review here is from the early reviews program. Perhaps the publishers are not getting enough return out of it. ( )

This book of essay or ersatz dialogue takes us into the iconoclastic mind of James Howard Kunstler, a resituated New Yorker. Duncan Crary seems to function as Kunstler's amanuensis. Kunstler is always interesting even when he devolves into something of a rant. I tend to agree with his concern about USA sprawl, whose greates protagonist, Randal O'toole, has written often against public transit.

I am not sure that Kunstler likes large cities and the two authors extol their two small cities near Albany (NY): Troy (where Crary lives) and Saratoga Springs (Kunstler). Small cities do not have the spral of large cities, but don't really have the size for public transportation or the great urban amenities one assoicates with cities like New Yor, Boston, and San Francisco.

Kunstler has a short essay on the effect of Vietnam on American culture that I found quite interesting. He is also very sympathetic to the idea of the New Urbanism, some of which can be seen in Seaside, Florida. He does not like the architecture of Koolhaas or Gehry, but I find these two post-moderns to be fascinating. Kunstler wants to point back to an earlier age, probably pre-modern.

He does want to see a revival of rail transportation, both of the urban variety, which is happening, and the intercity type (Amtrak), which is more stymied. He also want us to look more at water transportation, whose costs and limiting geography work against it, despite their natural charm.

He does a series of city Fly-bys, most of which I found that I agreed wwith. But his distress for Minneapolis seems unwarranted. He does not like the walkways between buildings, even though this cities has lots of minus 0 days and despite a rather active downtown., which he found depressing. ( )