Since the time of Aristotle and the Greek philosophers, humans have debated just what the good life is. Champagne and caviar? Solitude by Walden Pond?
I was commissioned to write a book called A Smaller Circle: The Search for Community in 1990 by a London publisher, Random Century, part of Random House. The acquisitions editor described it as
My usual walk is to Lake Mansfield, through the neighborhood we call "The Hill." I occasionally see people but not many. It's a quiet neighborhood, and even quieter along the lake until you get to the beach (busy this time of year). But this morning we needed milk so I walked down the hill to Main Street, to the Berkshire Coop. I had other on-foot errands (dropping boxes of cereal the no one likes at the food pantry and returning hangers to the drycleaners) I could do. More important, I [...]
I hadn't realized that I need to write about the acid house rave movement in my book on community! This is a fascinating article though, from the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph (not owned by Murdoch but traditionally conservative/Tory, with very large readership): Rather than eating out in traditional restaurants, Britons will increasingly share meals at home with neighbours and other members of their community. There will also be an escalation of informal open-air
Lewis Mumford appeared on the cover of TIME on 18 April 1938 (click here to view), after the publication of his first book on the city, The Culture of Cities. Read the review here. He published a second, The City in History, in 1961, reviewed in TIME with the title "Books: Necropolis Revisited" (read here). I spent many afternoons in the Mumfords' country house and got to know Lewis through long conversations with his widow, Sophia, and I've read his books and gone through many of his letters and photographs. [...]