Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
There were, in 1914, 50,000 city employees and this meant 50,000 men and women who owed their pay checks—and whose families owed the food and shelter those pay checks bought—not to merit but to the ward boss. Patronage was the coinage of power in New York City.
Robert A. Caro • The Power Broker
In the 1980s, Milwaukee was the epicenter of deindustrialization. In the 1990s, it would become “the epicenter of the antiwelfare crusade.” As President Clinton was fine-tuning his plan to “end welfare as we know it,” a conservative reformer by the name of Jason Turner was transforming Milwaukee into a policy experiment that captivated lawmakers ar
... See moreMatthew Desmond • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
As his collar indicated, 10 was indeed dead. He had been shot by a local man named Chad McKittrick, who, after being arrested and charged with a federal offense for shooting an endangered animal, claimed he had thought he was shooting a feral dog. It wasn’t the perfect crime; a friend of McKittrick’s had disposed of 10’s collar in a culvert filled
... See moreNate Blakeslee • American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West
The city’s government did little to help its people. The will to help was not the force that drove that government. That force was greed. During the fifteen years in which Red Mike Hylan and then Beau James Walker had been Chief Magistrate of America’s greatest city, the Tammany leaders who served under them had seemed motivated primarily by the de
... See moreRobert A. Caro • The Power Broker
Leo Melamed, Man of the Futures: The Story of Leo Melamed & the Birth of Modern Finance
J. Christopher Giancarlo, Cameron Winklevoss, • CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money
then mayor Dick Riordon got the 10 back on line after the Northridge quake a full three months ahead of schedule. He even issued curfews and no one gave a rat’s ass. They loved him.
Scott Frank • Shaker: A novel
Too many have bought into a perverse inversion of what the city should be. Cities are where wealth is created, not just where it is displayed. They are meant to be escalators into the middle class, not penthouses for the upper class. But through bad policy and worse politics, we are doing in the twenty-first century what we so feared in the ninetee
... See moreEzra Klein • Abundance
Smith and Wagner exemplified the spirit of urban reform that characterized Tammany in 1911, though FDR had yet to recognize it.
Jean Edward Smith • FDR
