The Quarterly

Volume 1, Number 1

Books That Matter

As a regular feature we're including summaries of books people are recommending. Here follows an editor's feeble attempts to pry from Ms. Jacobs her current reading picks:

MWR: Jane, are you reading anything these days?

JJ: I'm reading stuff but I'm trying to keep my mind clear of pondering on or thinking about other things, or it plays havoc with me. I've been working and when bills come in I pay the bills and that's all I do, literally. I'm supposedly rewriting but it's very largely new writing. The chapter I was working on has turned into three chapters. Anyhow, it's as arduous as doing it the first time, in its own way. I like input, I've got to get input. You know I read quite a lot to get input, but what is discombobulating is if I have to try to convert it into output that isn't this output I'm concentrating on.

MWR: I see what you mean. So in terms of inputs, have you got any suggestions on what people should be having a look at?

JJ: No, because that's output. I'm very self-centred. Anything I take in is grist for my own mill, and if I have to start thinking what other's people's mills need for grist, that's output.

A book about Jane Jacobs:

Ideas That Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs

edited by Max Allen 1997 softcover edition

215 pages $24.95 Cdn

This is an unusual book in many ways. The first, and most apparent, is that there is no single author. It is a compilation of magazine and newspaper articles, previously unpublished letters and speeches written by Jane, private and public photographs and a festschrift of original pieces written for Jane by Stewart Brand, Bronwyn Drainie, Ursula Franklin, Leticia Kent, Norman Mailer, Jan Morris and others. The book evolved during an intense period of six months; like many self-organizing systems it took on a life of its own, and became something quite different to what was originally intended. The elements are organized more or less chronologically to create a narrative thread. The intention of IDEAS THAT MATTER: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs is to provide readers with a greater understanding of the woman who has changed the way we think about so many things.

Books by Jane Jacobs:

SYSTEMS OF SURVIVAL: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics

1992 softcover edition 236 pages $17.95 Cdn

Using the Platonic dialogue, Jacobs addresses the moral values that underpin all of public life. She identifies two distinct moral syndromes "commercial and guardian" and, using sources ranging from studies on animal habits to today's headlines, she explores what happens when these syndromes collide.

CITIES AND THE WEALTH OF NATIONS: Principles of Economic Life

1984 softcover edition 257 pages $16.00 Cdn

"Societies and civilizations in which the cities stagnate don't develop and flourish. They deteriorate." Jane Jacobs Cities and the Wealth of Nations offers a concrete approach to the abstract and elusive subject of the decay of cities in an increasingly integrated world market.

ECONOMY OF CITIES

1969 softcover edition 268 pages $16.95 Cdn

"This book is an outcome of my curiosity about why some cities grow and why others stagnate and decay ... [It is] my effort to develop a theory of city economic growth." Jane Jacobs

DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES

1961 hardcover edition 458 pages $25.50 Cdn

Perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning, Death and Life of Great American Cities is a direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century.

A SCHOOLTEACHER IN OLD ALASKA: The Story of Hannah Breece

Edited and with an Introduction and Commentary by Jane Jacobs

1995 softcover edition 302 pages $16.95 Cdn

When Hannah Breece came to Alaska in 1904, it was a remote, lawless, wilderness of gold prospectors, murderous bootleggers, tribal chiefs, and Russian priests. In this book, Hannah Breece's great-niece, Jane Jacobs, faithfully retraces her great-aunt's footsteps in Alaska and the Yukon, deftly filling in narrative gaps and adding historical context to let Breece's memoir speak in its own clear voice.

More Books that Matter:

Dan Yashinsky's stories have been collected into a number of softcover books including:
At the Edge: A Book of Risky Stories ($14.95)
Ghostwise: A Book of Midnight Stories ($14.95)
Next Teller: A Book of Canadian Storytelling ($12.95)
The Storyteller at Fault ($9.95)
Tales for an Unknown City ($19.95)

The Farm & City Cookbook by Kathryn MacDonald and Mary Lou Morgan

1995 softcover 292 pages $14.95

Recipes in The Farm & City Cookbook reflect the traditions of farm cooking, using fresh local foods, as well as the rich influence of many cultures on our cuisine. This comfortable book also includes personal stories and anecdotes by the authors whose perceptive observations make the links between food production and the food on our tables. "And the recipes are great!" - MWRThe Good food box book

by Kathryn Scharf and Mary Lou Morgan

1998 binder 90 pages $25.00

This is a training manual on how to start a Good Food Box program in your community.

Stuff: The Materials the World Is Made Of

1998 softcover 304 pages $16.50

"Each chapter in this remarkable book is about one thing and where it comes from, right down to its very beginning. One chapter 'the easy one' is about Nike shoes. Every molecule is traced, starting with who works in the oil well that made the oil that turned into the plastic that became the shoelace of the Nike shoe. But Stuff is not just about shoes, it's about t-shirts and cauliflowers and a number of different things. And boy is it complicated."
Recommended by Max Allen.