In Land We Trust
The Community Land Trust Reader, edited by John Emmeus Davis. Lincoln Institute, 2010, 616 pp. $35 (paper).
The Housing Crisis: How Did We Get Here? Where Do We Go?
In early October 2008, The Kirwan Institute hosted a national summit on subprime lending, foreclosure, and race. We didn't know it when we were planning the event, but a series of unfolding economic events spurred by our nation's housing crisis would have our government contemplating a $700 billion financial sector bailout on the eve of our convening.
Taking Action Against Wage Theft
Wage Theft In America, by Kim Bobo. The New Press, 2009, 336 pp. $17.95 (paperback).
Occupied Owner
For decades, the United States government, pushed by its business partners in the financial and real estate world, "marched the nation into a delusion." The fantasy is that we can create wealth for millions of homeowners by enriching investors, brokerage and mortgage companies and Wall Street bankers "to the fullest extent possible with few boundaries."
Capitalizing on Hope in the Capital
It’s as though we’ve suddenly discovered a new form of Prozac called Obama. Miraculously, millions of depressed progressives have the audacity to hope again. Alas, hundreds of them are also churning out books, hoping...
The Trials of Grassroots Community Planning
Tom Angotti’s new book, New York For Sale, shows just how frustrating it can be to achieve true community-based planning. He writes that after the city government gave the power to plan to community...
What the Mermaid Taught Me
Wrestling With Starbucks, by Kim Fellner. Rutgers University
Press, 2008, 283 pp. $24.95 (hardcover).
Press, 2008, 283 pp. $24.95 (hardcover).
Radical Liberals
Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, by Robert B. Reich (2007, Knoph, New York) and The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity, by Robert Kuttner (2007, Knoph, New York.)
Freedom for the Pike
Book Review: Subprime Mortgages: America's Latest Boom and Bust, by Edward M. Gramlich.
Urban Institute Press, 2007, 120 pp. $25.00 (hardcover).
Urban Institute Press, 2007, 120 pp. $25.00 (hardcover).
In It Together
The latest book by Bill McKibben, the well-known environmental journalist and activist, poses a provocative question for community economic developers: How do we improve the lives of the people in communities: By giving them...
Advancing Power
Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change, edited by Marion Orr. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2007, 264 pp. $19.95 (paperback).
Good writing on community organizing is sparse, and much...
The ABCs of Organizing
I left a perfectly good job in a curtain factory in Holyoke, Mass., in 1971 to work in a neighborhood organization on the south side of Providence, Rhode Island. I received no formal training...
Lessons from a Chicago Saga
In "Waiting for Gautreaux," Polikoff examines the 30-year effort to eliminate the Black ghetto and move Chicago Housing Authority tenants to integrated communities.
When Goliath Comes
Promise and Betrayal: Universities and the Battle for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods, by John I. Gilderbloom and R.L. Mullins Jr. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005, 228 pp. $24.95 (paperback).
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Can universities rebuild disinvested...
Ghetto Salvation
How the Other Half Worships, by Camilo Jose Vergara. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2005, 304 pp. $49.95 (clothbound).
Suppose an alien came to Earth. It is searching for God’s presence. It asks you...
A Community Whodunit
The Long Stair: An Albany Mystery, by Kirby White. Fox Creek Press, 2005, 220 pp. $15 (paperback). The Long Stair is available for $15 (plus tax) from the Capital District Community Loan Fund at...
Designing Affordable Housing
Good design and affordability are not mutually exclusive, but finding help to bring these two together can be tough.
Thirty Years of Pablo: In His Own Words
Challenges for Nonprofits and Philanthropy: The Courage to Change – Three Decades of Reflections, by Pablo Eisenberg, edited by Stacy Palmer. Tufts University Press, 2005, 242 pp. $29.95 (hardcover). Years ago, Robert Malaga,...
Class Ties That Bind
Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists, by Betsy Leondar-Wright. New Society Publishers, 2005, 192 pp. $18.95 (paperback). Just as I was completing this book review, Hurricane Katrina blew into all of...
Getting Back to the Basics
Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, by Theda Skocpol. University of Oklahoma Press, 2003, 366 pp, $29.95 (hardcover). The debate raging between centrists and left-progressives as to whether Democrats...