All posts tagged: The Edge of the American West

Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses and the Future of the American City

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One of the blogs I check on a regular basis is The Edge of the American West. It features a variety of viewpoints, sharp writing, and intelligent discussions on history.  On the about page, the blog features the quote:  History is Philosophy teaching by example. Today there’s a post on the site entitled “I hate the government for making my life absurd” – a quote from urban crusader and preservation heroine Jane Jacobs. The writer is highlighting a new book on the relationship between Jacobs and the New York City power broker Robert Moses, which was featured in the New York Times on Tuesday. Writing in the Times, reviewer Dwight Garner provides the background for the Wrestling With Moses: Moses and Jacobs clashed during the 1950s and ’60s over three of the huge public works projects Moses tried to force on Manhattan. It is hard even to list them now without cringing — or nearly weeping with gratitude that they never came to pass.There was his plan to build a four-lane highway through the middle …

Searching the Internet and Finding…The Edge of the American West

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In yet another of my posts on very interesting web sites found while searching the Internet, I bring you today The Edge of the American West.  This is a site that contains writings by historians and philosophers, leading the site to suggest that “History is Philosophy teaching by examples. ” The interests of these men and women run the gamut, if recent posts are any example.  They do a regular This Day in History type of post, one of the most recent being about the day that Richard Nixon declared he wasn’t a crook.  To give  you a sense of the politics here, the post is entitled “Yes You Are.  And Also a Liar.”   There are posts on camel metaphors (having to do with choosing cabinet members), and the day in 1972 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average first closed above 1,000.  (We may be headed back there!) But I knew this was a website worth checking when I read Aw, that could have been MY head.  Here the writer tells the story of how he …