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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1193307.Dark_Age_Ahead?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Dark Age Ahead" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181777380m/1193307.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1193307.Dark_Age_Ahead?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Dark Age Ahead</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17285.Jane_Jacobs">Jane Jacobs</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4632942?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 2 of 5 stars<br/>I had mixed feelings: Jacobs wrote this book not long before her death, and at times it has the feel of an incoherent, rambling old person. Other times, she makes astute cultural and political analyses, particularly about Canada. Jacobs is an American who lived the better part of her adult life in Canada, so she has ample knowledge of politics, urban life, and cultural on both sides of the border, and she is a respected urban critic/theorist by both Americans and Canadians. In this book, her introduction in which she outlines past dark ages and her argument that we are about to enter into one is a bit all over the place; her attack on academia (accreditation vs. educataion) has its moments, but mostly sounds like someone who is self-righteous about the fact that she became a superstar in a field in which she received no formal training. Nevertheless, her criticism of the unsientific tendencies in some academic fields that on the surface seem scientific ("traffic engineering") do get to the point of the failure of city building/re-building since the advent of the automobile, though her generalizations are sometimes hard to digest. Her chapter on "dumbed-down taxes" regards mostly the political situation in Ontario, and in particular in Toronto, in the early 2000s, an issue that could enlighten especially American readers, but that also may feel completely foreign and irrelevant to them. Basically, she echoes the movement towards greater autonomy for urban centers in regard to taxes, especially in relation to the state/provincial and federal levels, which is an issue that is in the press a lot in Canada and in particular in Toronto these days (Toronto's social-democratic mayor being one of its leading proponents). Similar to her criticism of the academy, she devotes a chapter to the self-regulation and self-policing of the learned professions and the impact that such activities have on society. In all, it's an interesting read that's worth the couple of hours it will take to read it, though her arguments are not always entirely coherent or substantialized.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/255097?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Kevin's review
rating:
recommended for: people like me

I had mixed feelings: Jacobs wrote this book not long before her death, and at times it has the feel of an incoherent, rambling old person. Other times, she makes astute cultural and political analyses, particularly about Canada. Jacobs is an American who lived the better part of her adult life in Canada, so she has ample knowledge of politics, urban life, and cultural on both sides of the border, and she is a respected urban critic/theorist by both Americans and Canadians. In this book, her introduction in which she outlines past dark ages and her argument that we are about to enter into one is a bit all over the place; her attack on academia (accreditation vs. educataion) has its moments, but mostly sounds like someone who is self-righteous about the fact that she became a superstar in a field in which she received no formal training. Nevertheless, her criticism of the unsientific tendencies in some academic fields that on the surface seem scientific ("traffic engineering")...more I had mixed feelings: Jacobs wrote this book not long before her death, and at times it has the feel of an incoherent, rambling old person. Other times, she makes astute cultural and political analyses, particularly about Canada. Jacobs is an American who lived the better part of her adult life in Canada, so she has ample knowledge of politics, urban life, and cultural on both sides of the border, and she is a respected urban critic/theorist by both Americans and Canadians. In this book, her introduction in which she outlines past dark ages and her argument that we are about to enter into one is a bit all over the place; her attack on academia (accreditation vs. educataion) has its moments, but mostly sounds like someone who is self-righteous about the fact that she became a superstar in a field in which she received no formal training. Nevertheless, her criticism of the unsientific tendencies in some academic fields that on the surface seem scientific ("traffic engineering") do get to the point of the failure of city building/re-building since the advent of the automobile, though her generalizations are sometimes hard to digest. Her chapter on "dumbed-down taxes" regards mostly the political situation in Ontario, and in particular in Toronto, in the early 2000s, an issue that could enlighten especially American readers, but that also may feel completely foreign and irrelevant to them. Basically, she echoes the movement towards greater autonomy for urban centers in regard to taxes, especially in relation to the state/provincial and federal levels, which is an issue that is in the press a lot in Canada and in particular in Toronto these days (Toronto's social-democratic mayor being one of its leading proponents). Similar to her criticism of the academy, she devotes a chapter to the self-regulation and self-policing of the learned professions and the impact that such activities have on society. In all, it's an interesting read that's worth the couple of hours it will take to read it, though her arguments are not always entirely coherent or substantialized....less

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