Reviews and Comments

This is a book that challenges the reader and pushes the boundaries of what a book can be. I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

I highly recommend this book to anarchists or libertarian leftists in general. It beautifully builds and explores a functioning anarchist society, and some of the dysfunction that could exist in such a society. It also has some great classic SciFi world building.

If bookwyrm allowed it I'd give a 4.5. The only flaw is a somewhat rushed feeling ending. Doesn't take away from the rest of the book tho.

Each of these stories is a not-so-subtle reference to real political issues and undercurrents right now, which I think is important to note. You won't find escapism here. But you will find a lot of food for thought in a digestible format, and that's what I really appreciated.

I'm actually updating my rating, which was a 4/5 originally. I still think about and reference this book regularly, so I think it deserves that 5.

The tenth anniversary of this book is a must. The original is good, but it lacks any analysis of race. The tenth anniversary filled in a lot of these gaps, as well as reckoning with societal and tech changes since original publication.

To date this is the single most informative and comprehensive urbanist book I know, while still being very easy to read. It's not perfect, but it's the best place to start.

Read for urbanist book club. I did not fully finish this. It's a classic work for a reason. But it suffers from the fact that better written, more interesting, and up to date works have built on the topic. This book did everything right in its era, but it's just aged.

Read last year for Urbanist book club. Book has some good and interesting points about the complexity of fixing the urban canopy in disinvested/redlines neighborhoods. There's a strange current throughout where the author, a white woman, talks about the importance of listening to minority communities while almost entirely focusing only on her own perspective.

Just started reading this for the July #STLUrbanists book club. Really excited for this analysis, because I think it addresses an interesting contradiction in car culture - how cars have been simultaneously liberating to minorities and yet another vector for policing and indebting people.

A short read about space exploration in search of other life forms. Some interesting thoughts about ethical science, and some imaginative world building. But overall it's a bit thin and ends in an unsatisfying way that feels a little forced.

actually started a couple months ago. Halfway through.

Unfinished. Not because of any issue with the book but because for me, as someone who has read a dozen or so urbanist books, it's a little bit of a retread, and I just found myself gravitating elsewhere.