America's Undeclared War, Daniel Lazare

America's Undeclared War:  What's Killing Our Cities and How We Can Stop It by Daniel Lazare is a book that I picked up in the stairwell of a used book store.  I cannot remember the store, but I definitely remember the stairwell and this book on top of an unsorted pile.  I stood in that small stairwell and read the first chapter and was entranced.  While writing this introduction I did a little research on Lazare and found that he is about as left wing as they come.  I seem to be increasingly comfortable with the left wing and my youngest son and I have had long discussions about how we could conceive ways to help Baltimore--a city in trouble by any measure.  When I saw that this book had risen to the top of my reading list, I couldn't help but feel that this was no coincidence.

Started:  1/29/2016

Completed:  5/24/2016

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

bluenose -- a priggish or puritanical person

bosky -- wooded; covered by trees or bushes

burgher -- a citizen of a town or city, typically a member of the wealthy bourgeoisie

cerise -- a bright or deep red color

deracinated -- removed or separated from a native environment or culture

fin de siècle -- French for the end of a century

flivver -- a cheap car or aircraft, especially one in bad condition

Girondist Revolution -- a revolution of moderate republicans (based on the Gironde party in France which was overthrown by the Jacobins during the French Revolution)

Gresham's Law -- when a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, and the overvalued money will flood into circulation.

longue durée -- an expression used by the French Annales School of historical writing to designate their approach to the study of history, which gives priority to long-term historical structures over events.

parsimony -- extreme unwillingness to spend money or use resources

patroon -- a person given land and granted certain manorial privileges under the former Dutch governments of New York and New Jersey

preauto -- before the automobile

profligate -- recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources

quisling -- a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country

rentier -- a person living on income from property or investments

rump legislature -- a legislature formed of a part, usually a minority, of the legislators originally elected or appointed to office

sansculotte -- a violent or radical extremist in politics

shibboleth --a custom, principal, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a group of people especially a long standing oneregarded as outmoded or no longer important

stolid -- calm, dependable and showing little emotion or animation

sumptuary -- relating to or denoting laws that limit private expenditure on food and personal items

teleology -- the explanation of things by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes

truculent -- eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant

truncheon -- a short, thick stick used as a weapon by police

yeoman -- a man holding and cultivating a small landed estate; a freeholder

Review:

The author has a distinct point of view and he has marshalled a strong evidentiary pool to support it.  The heart of his argument is that Henry Ford favored enclaves of workers who were isolated in small groups to break labor's power.  Additionally, Ford was racist and an anti-semite so he was in favor of the good life only for WASPs.

The author calls this Fordism and extends the argument across the USA claiming that everyone fell in line.  However, rather than arguing that Ford was a great influencer, he seems to make the case that everyone else thought like Ford.  This seems unlikely, although he is able to put forth quotations from a decent size set of people, it did not feel like this was a pervasive sense of people hating cities in general, it felt more like it was people who were bigots or anti-labor being linked together as anti-city.  If there was, indeed, a huge colection of highly influential people (including presidents) who were expressly anti-city from the 1700s onward, how could cities still exist?

Rather, I think there were people concerned about how to improve what they felt were the negative aspects of the city (consider parks as a play area for children, which the author feels is a waste of space because there would be plenty of space to play in the streets if Fordists weren't so insistent on having a place for environment destroying traffic jams).  The author also cites city planners who tried to make the city feel less claustrophobic as responsible for creating useless and unused spaces as Fordists trying to substitute suburban open spaces for city integration, thus creating barren areas of the city.

The author's arguments do hang together, but it feels artificial.  Even people who start out opposing the city, but come to love it are marked as hypocrites at best or spoilers who only appreciate the good once it is gone.  He does make some good recommendations in the end, although my eye suggests these are just good ideas in general and not simply good for the city.  Some of his recommendations go too far (I think he would get rid of cars entirely) but he is definitely on the right path with many of his ideas.  The problem is that once you get to the ideas, you are so jaded by the author's argument that everyone who does not completely agree with him is "bad" that you are loathe to agree with him.