The Unwinding

“Our destiny is not written for us, but by us.

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.

were known as “straw buyers”—might not exist, or might be victims of identity theft. Or they might be Sonny Kim’s partners in mortgage fraud. So might the brokers, appraisers, notaries, title agents, and ultimately the bankers who were in on the deals, some of them showing up again and again. Everyone was making money on Sonny Kim’s business, and t

Life was richest and most creative where people of different backgrounds could meet face-to-face and exchange ideas. And that happened in cities—cities of a particular kind.

back to where we were before, but yet we will

floodlit Bojangles’ up the hill from his house, and that meat would be drowned in the bubbling fryers by employees whose hatred of the job would leak into the cooked food, and that food would be served up and eaten by customers who would grow obese and end up in the hospital in Greensboro with diabetes or heart failure, a burden to the public, and

Florida drew the transient and rootless on the eternal promise of a second chance, with more than its share of scammers and con men. So who was to say the guy living next door wasn’t one of them? A subdivision like Carriage Pointe was Jane Jacobs’s vision of hell.

That’s the way nature works. Whether you have the persistence, determination, dedication to see it through—that’s a different story.”

The things you once thought important or even worth dying for aren’t worth a nickel now.