The Editors of Fortune

I have owned this book for a long time. I realize that I still think about this book and its look at the urban scene in the United States in the late 1950's. Cities were seen as becoming more impersonal and oerwhelmed by overgrowth that affeced city and suburbs alike. There are two chapters by William Whyte who helped Philadelphia leap better into the postwar era, even if belatedly. Jane Jacobs wrote the last chapter, focusing not so much on urban village life, but instead creating more personal spaces in dowtown areas. The theme I most concentrated on was the effext of the car on city travel. Public transit was already not doing well in most cities and it is interesting to relook at this data 60 years later. An amazing realization is that crime was not deemed as an important problem inthe 1950's. Only two small paragraphs deal with policing. Citie are now coming full circle wih the lower crime rates, the return to dowtown for residential living, and the many streetcar and light rail project.… (altro)

The authors are "journalists", and they clearly interviewed their subjects and informed sources. However candid the subjects appear to have been, no effort went into digging into contradictions and I found their deference almost alarming. It is not surprising that this work does not "expose" a single one of these predators in any way, although most of them have mythologized themselves and clearly indulged in a number of outright fabrications.

These Biographies of American men -- all white males -- were published in the Magazine and are nicely comprehended together at the mid-century. They shared an outlook, an attitude, deeply committed to aquisition of money. As a book, it fails to reveal what definition was used in the selection of "successful" men, and we never discover the "art" practiced in seizing money.

We find the same "attitude", perhaps in a far more resourceful and intense manifestation, among the gang leaders who learn how to survive in slums. Grabbing stuff, and stealing what can be stolen, does not become an "art" when it is practiced by wealthy white males. These are accounts, often quite detailed, of thuggery.… (altro)