Dark age ahead / Jane Jacobs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jacobs, Jane, 1916-2006.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Regression (Civilization).

Civilization--Philosophy.

Civilization.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

241 pages ; 20 cm

Edition:

First Vintage Books edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Vintage Books, 2005.

Summary:

Publisher's description: Visionary thinker Jane Jacobs uses her authoritative work on urban life and economies to show us how we can protect and strengthen our culture and communities. In Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs identifies five pillars of our culture that we depend on but which are in serious decline: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation and government; and self-policing by learned professions. The decay of these pillars, Jacobs contends, is behind such ills as environmental crisis, racism and the growing gulf between rich and poor; their continued degradation could lead us into a new Dark Age, a period of cultural collapse in which all that keeps a society alive and vibrant is forgotten. But this is a hopeful book as well as a warning. Jacobs draws on her vast frame of reference -- from fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to zoning regulations in Brampton, Ontario -- and in highly readable, invigorating prose offers proposals that could arrest the cycles of decay and turn them into beneficent ones. Wise, worldly, full of real-life examples and accessible concepts, this book is an essential read for perilous times.

Contents:

The hazard

Families rigged to fail

Credentialing versus educating

Science abandoned

Dumbed-down taxes

Self-policing subverted

Unwinding vicious spirals

Dark age patterns.

Notes:

Originally published: New York : Random House, 2004.

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1400076706

9781400076703

OCLC:

60425073

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description