When Harper’s Magazine published Kevin Baker’s lyrical elegy to New York City in July 2018, it went as viral as the affliction it identified. “The urban crisis of affluence,” as Baker called it, was leeching the diversity out of everything from the culture to the landscape of his beloved hometown. Now expanded to book length, “The Fall of a Great American City” delves deeper into what has become a national crisis affecting every city from Boston to Seattle. Baker looks for the root causes and suggests how we might dig ourselves out before excessive wealth destroys everything that once defined metropolitan life.
Hardcover
