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Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs
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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2016
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Description
The first major biography of the irrepressible woman who changed the way we view and live in cities, and whose influence can still be felt in any discussion of urban planning to this day.
Eyes on the Street is a revelation of the phenomenal woman who raised three children, wrote seven groundbreaking books, saved neighborhoods, stopped expressways, was arrested twice, and engaged at home and on the streets in thousands of debates—all of which she won. Here is the child who challenged her third-grade teacher; the high school poet; the journalist who honed her writing skills at Iron Age, Architectural Forum, Fortune, and other outlets, while amassing the knowledge she would draw upon to write her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here, too, is the activist who helped lead an ultimately successful protest against Robert Moses's proposed expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village; and who, in order to keep her sons out of the Vietnam War, moved to Canada, where she became as well known and admired as she was in the United States.
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Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
09/20/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780307961914
ASIN:
B019B6SA5K
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APA Citation (style guide)

Robert Kanigel. (2016). Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Robert Kanigel. 2016. Eyes On the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Robert Kanigel, Eyes On the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Robert Kanigel. Eyes On the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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      • bioText: ROBERT KANIGEL is the author of seven previous books. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Grady-Stack Award for science writing. His book The Man Who Knew Infinity was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. For twelve years he was a professor of science writing at M.I.T. He and his wife now live in Baltimore, Maryland, and he writes full time.
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title
Eyes on the Street
fullDescription
The first major biography of the irrepressible woman who changed the way we view and live in cities, and whose influence can still be felt in any discussion of urban planning to this day.
Eyes on the Street is a revelation of the phenomenal woman who raised three children, wrote seven groundbreaking books, saved neighborhoods, stopped expressways, was arrested twice, and engaged at home and on the streets in thousands of debates—all of which she won. Here is the child who challenged her third-grade teacher; the high school poet; the journalist who honed her writing skills at Iron Age, Architectural Forum, Fortune, and other outlets, while amassing the knowledge she would draw upon to write her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here, too, is the activist who helped lead an ultimately successful protest against Robert Moses's proposed expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village; and who, in order to keep her sons out of the Vietnam War, moved to Canada, where she became as well known and admired as she was in the United States.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Planning: The Journal of the American Planning Association
      • content: "For those who never or barely knew [Jane], the book is a feast . . . A must-read for those interested in the making of perhaps the most unconventional of the influential minds of the 20th century . . . A good biography makes readers wish they had known the person; a great one makes them feel as though they did. In its careful but not lingering attention to tiny details and their context, this is a great one."
      • premium: False
      • source: Catherine Tumber, The American Prospect
      • content: "Engrossing . . . Definitive . . . Excels in capturing the tone of Jane Jacobs's life, how her straight-forward impatience with anything 'stagnant' and 'dull' ran like a thread throughout. Her warmth comes through too."
      • premium: False
      • source: Samuel Zipp, n+1
      • content: "Kanigel's book is sure-footed and even skeptical at times, and if he lapses into whimsicality now and then, skimming lightly over the surface of Jacobs's ideas, he has offered something few others have in a crowded field: a new way of seeing this familiar, almost sainted figure. . . . Life, vitality, newness, constant becoming--these, Kanigel reveals, were the true subject of Jacobs's most famous book--and of her life's work."
      • premium: False
      • source: Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air (NPR)
      • content: "A powerful and all too rare biography of the making of a female public intellectual . . . It's thrilling to read here about Jacobs's public face-offs with minions of Robert Moses over the Lower Manhattan Expressway project; but, it's just as thrilling to be privy to how she developed her thinking about how cities worked."
      • premium: False
      • source: Emily Badger, The Washington Post
      • content: "The definitive Jacobs biography illuminating how her ideas rankled, spread and then garnered her such devotion . . . Kanigel's book invites the question of how this woman who forced so many of us to see cities differently might help us interpret their state today, and whether she's up to the task."
      • premium: False
      • source: Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
      • content: "Kanigel has found the right tone for his subject, light but serious."
      • premium: False
      • source: John Buntin, Wall Street Journal
      • content: "Mr. Kanigel tells this story well. [And he] does a fine job of describing the shock the book [The Death and Life of Great American Cities] caused. He also calls attention to insightful critiques, such as the one written by sociologist Herbert Gans."
      • premium: False
      • source: Ginia Ballafante, The New York Times Book Review
      • content: "Kanigel rightly tries to counter some of the deification around Jacobs's cultural standing, leaving us with a work of wary appreciation that perhaps isn't quite wary enough . . . [His] book invites the rest of us to keep debating."
      • premium: False
      • source: Hilary Reid, The Brooklyn Rail
      • content: "A well-researched, comprehensive portrait of Jacobs--one that is both reverent and realistic . . . It becomes expansive and fascinating as Jacobs moves through the city, beginning to observe the streets and people that would inform her later work."
      • premium: False
      • source: Randy Dotinga, Christian Science Monitor
      • content: "A fond and perceptive new biography of Jane Jacobs."
      • premium: False
      • source: Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune
      • content: "Sparkling . . . Magisterial . . . [Eyes on the Street] is an exhaustively researched, beautifully rendered tale, revealing the human contours of a vigorous, original mind."
      • premium: False
      • source: Marc Weingarten, The Guardian
      • content: "Traces Jacob's intellectual development from New York-based freelance journalist to activist who not only wrote groundbreaking books but also took on 1960's political behemoths Carmine DeSapio and Robert Moses."
      • premium: False
      • source: Anthony Flint, Boston Globe
      • content: "A portrait emerges of an independent heroine who stepped into an arena dominated by men. She was Betty Friedan, Rachel Carson, and Erin Brockovich all rolled into one."
      • premium: False
      • source: Richard Florida, Citylab
      • content: "Eyes on the Street is the Jane Jacobs biography I've been waiting for."
      • premium: False
      • source: Randy Shaw, Beyond Chron
      • content: "Kanigel has created what will likely become the definitive biography of Jane Jacobs in her centenary year. . . . Jane Jacobs was a woman in an overwhelming male field and lacked a planning degree, yet as Kanigel shows, she became and remains the most important urban visionary of our time."
      • premium: False
      • source: Marilyn Gates, New York Journal of Books
      • content: "A first-rate in-depth appreciation of Jane Jacobs as one of the most influential intellectual figures of the 20th century. More of a personal story than an intellectual history, Kanigel brings this extraordinary woman to life while showing how her ideas unfolded, so that even readers unfamiliar with Jacobs and her work gain insights into how a curious and tenacious mind transformed both the ways we look at cities and our strategies of community activism."
      • premium: False
      • source: Shelf Awareness
      • content: "[A] first-rate story of one of the gr
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from May 30, 2016
        Kanigel (The Man Who Knew Infinity) captures the life and character of Jane Jacobs (1916–2006), a stubborn, principled activist and the doyenne of urban planning. Jacobs—best known for her highly influential and heralded book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which attacked efficiency-focused midcentury urban planning policies and called for livable, diverse, and pedestrian-friendly cities—led an intellectually and socially rich life from start to finish. She enjoyed an idyllic childhood in Scranton, Pa., and got her first big break in 1935 at age 19, writing about Manhattan’s fur district for Vogue. She fell in love with the lively West Village upon exiting the Christopher Street subway station for the first time. Kanigel turns Jacobs’s life into a fascinating narrative with an endearing, obstinate, brilliant protagonist. Readers familiar with Jacobs’s work will enjoy reading the behind-the-scenes anecdotes from her career—at her first lecture at Harvard, which was a smashing success, she was only filling in at the last minute for her boss and was so nervous she memorized her speech beforehand—and those who are learning about her for the first time will want to immediately pick up one (or all seven) of the books she wrote. Agent: Michael V. Carlisle, InkWell Management.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        Starred review from July 1, 2016
        A significant, comprehensive biography of an irrepressible urbanist, author, and pioneering community activist.Drawing on a cache of archival source material, award-winning author Kanigel (On an Irish Island, 2012, etc.) engagingly assembles the extraordinary life of Jane Jacobs (1916-2006). She was an American-Canadian whom many considered radical and outspoken, and her feisty determination won her great respect and admiration alongside biting criticism. With affable prose and exacting detail, Kanigel diligently escorts readers through Jacobs' lifetime in a three-part narrative tracing her early years, when she cultivated a "defiantly independent" character, through her middle and later years, when intensive grass-roots organizing with civic groups bolstered her community-based perspectives on urban planning. As a schoolgirl in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Jacobs began challenging authority as she spoke up and "figured things out for herself, and said them," which led to run-ins with authority figures. Journalistic motivations led her to newspaper writing in Manhattan and an early career "coup" writing a piece on the fur district for Vogue at age 19. During that time, a fond appreciation for Greenwich Village bloomed. A whirlwind marriage to architect Robert Jacobs Jr. and a West Village property purchase proved blissful, and even the trouble of a redbaiting FBI investigation and a criminal mischief arrest hardly dimmed Jacobs' hardheaded, contrarian opinions on economic erosion, cultural collapse, and urban sprawl. The author shares a vast wealth of entertaining anecdotes highlighting Jacobs at her best (and worst) and features a particularly compelling address to urban designers at Harvard and the story of her vehement opposition to Robert Moses' Lower Manhattan Expressway project. Throughout her adulthood, Jacobs authored an impressive, intellectually innovative oeuvre, including the groundbreaking The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), which she wrote after her relocation to Canada with her family in the late 1960s. Kanigel crafts a well-rounded, illuminating narrative of a "woman of the people who'd risen up out of the gritty city streets to fight city hall." An outstanding chronicle of a provocative, influential, iconoclastic theorist of the American cityscape.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        July 1, 2016

        This is the first major biography of a writer, activist, and public intellectual considered to be one of the "most influential urban thinkers of all time." Iconoclastic, independent, and fearless, Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) is remembered for her 1961 best seller The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which influenced urban planning and architectural design concepts for more than 40 years. A city dweller for nearly her entire life, Jacobs challenged people to reconsider the best way to live at a time when suburbia was growing and "urban renewal" was destroying what she believed to be the richness and community inherent in traditional city life. Kanigel (On An Irish Island) mines archives, personal papers, and interviews with family and friends to create a sympathetic overview of Jacobs' career, political activism, and travels. The analysis of Jacobs' many writings is accompanied by contemporary reviews of her works along with accounts of her professional dealings with other key figures in the history of urban America such as Lewis Mumford, Herbert J. Gans, and Robert Moses. VERDICT This meticulously researched yet very readable book will appeal to anyone interested in American history after World War II but will especially engage those interested in city life, urban planning, and design.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

        Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from August 1, 2016
        Kanigel's delight in his subject, one of the premier intellectual figures of the twentieth century, shimmers on every page, so inspired is he by Jane Jacobs' independence, curiosity, antic humor, industriousness, and genius for discerning and articulating the dynamics of vibrant city life. Jacobs is most revered for her seminal work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), an audacious treatise by a Scranton gal who, for all her brains, completed a secretarial course but never finished college. Her office skills kept her employed in the 1930s, when she lived in Greenwich Village; she then found work as a writer at a trade magazine, the U.S. Office of War Information, and, after marrying an architect, Architectural Forum, where she began formulating her radical theories about the exuberant diversity of street life in the era of brutal urban renewal. Kanigel portrays Jacobs, intrepid mother of three, working intensely on her heavily researched, controversial books; successfully opposing neighborhood-destroying projects proposed by city planner Robert Moses; navigating fame; and moving with her family to Toronto in protest against the Vietnam War. In this zestfully illuminating and entertaining biography, Kanigel aligns Jacobs with her peers Rachel Carson and Betty Friedan as he takes full measure of her accomplishments and influence and elucidates the scope and passion of her unique quest to understand what sustains civilization.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

popularity
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The first major biography of the irrepressible woman who changed the way we view and live in cities, and whose influence can still be felt in any discussion of urban planning to this day.
Eyes on the Street is a revelation of the phenomenal woman who raised three children, wrote seven groundbreaking books, saved neighborhoods, stopped expressways, was arrested twice, and engaged at home and on the streets in thousands of debates—all of which she won. Here is the child who challenged her third-grade teacher; the high school poet; the journalist who honed her writing skills at Iron Age, Architectural Forum, Fortune, and other outlets, while amassing the knowledge she would draw upon to write her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here, too, is the activist who helped lead an ultimately successful protest against Robert Moses's proposed expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village; and who, in order to keep...
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