Washington Books

Patwant Singh's book "The World According to Washington" offers an insightful look at America's foreign policy and the controversy surrounding it. Although much contemporary political writing focuses solely on the American perspective, Singh provides a unique viewpoint through which we can examine the actions of the United States. In viewing America from a global context, we are able to gain insight into the true ramifications of America's foreign policy. I highly recommend this book.

Noted Indian writer Patwant Singh's book, The World According to Washington: An Asian View, provides a welcome antidote to the self-centered world view of the Bush administration.
A friend of the U.S., he has written it in an effort to call attention to widely held opinion, here and abroad, that unilateral policies serving the military-industrial complex have undermined U.S. credibility and jeopardized its security. These policies as realized in Iraq have brought esteem for the U.S. to a low point in Asia.
After a brief review of the history of U.S. involvement in Asia, his analysis includes Asians' profound disappointment in the current administration's contempt for treaty-constraints, especially concerning nuclear non-proliferation and global warming. Further, he highlights ironies Asians see that Americans seem to miss: the U.S. warning Iran not to intervene in Iraq's internal affairs, for example. It is no wonder that other nations fear that opposition to U.S. policies will cause them to be labeled "terrorist" and treated the same as Iraq.
While many people in the world admire American freedoms and generosity, Singh says "after September 11 this dream has soured, as U.S. xenophobes have turned against fellow-citizens of different appearance and colour." Unfortunately this seems to confirm Asian suspicions that racism at various levels of decision-making underlay the way in which military power has been misused in Vietnam and elsewhere.
Denial of safeguards to the rights of prisoners labeled "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo weakens the rights and freedoms of Americans as well. It is not only the impact this has on world opinion, especially in the Muslim world, Singh says, that is important.
Asians have come a long way, and their creativity and innovation now can match the West's. Therefore they ask to be treated with respect. This important book is an appeal to U.S. policymakers' intelligent self-interest.

Criticism From a Friend of America -

Distinguished and prolific Indian Author Patwant Singh tells us in his introduction, "I admire America. I have been visiting it regularly for over 40 years. I have long and enduring friendships there, and relish the welcoming warmth I experience each time I visit." Written by a friend, this unrelenting explanation of how Washington is viewed from Asia -- and why-- is particularly urgent now as America's economic position becomes more dependant on India and China, and political tensions in Asia escalate. Globalization, an unstoppable force for both good and ill, has destroyed any possibility of American isolationism. In spite of overwhelming military might, The United States cannot control the world. In his final chapter "The Pitfalls of Power", Patwant Singh gives us a unique view of ourselves. This is how others see us; we would do well to take heed.

Pamela de Maigret

There is nothing in Patwant Singh's professional background which would give a clue to his mastery over international intrigue and geo-political issues. Yet, clearly he is in command of his facts. He also has the ability to present them clearly and in a racy, readable style.

The book also makes a persuasive case of how America, enamoured with its own power, has become a modern East India Company. Asians sometimes joke that America is not a nation, it is a corporation. Patwant Singh provides serious evidence and analysis to back that view.

What he says here is not new to Asian audiences anymore. In the recent years, an astoundingly large number of anaysts and intellectuals have more or less accepted that America is behaving irresponsibly. Many Asians are now resigned to an inevitable confrontation with America, over an issue or a non-issue, sooner or later. Patwant Singh however illustrates that this is not a recent change in American thinking - for the lst 60 years America has been consistently (and constantly) at war with the world. For USA, the 2nd world war apparently did not end in 1945.

At the same time, it must be added that the book does not offer a counterpoint. The conclusion about America does not build up through the chapters -- it is there right from the beginning. Patwant Singh then merely keeps adding the facts and analysis that would prove his point. This may make it difficult for an ordinary reader to make an informed or neutral assessment of his thesis.

Also, while the book proposes to offer an Asian view, most of the material appears to have been taken from Western sources. One can understand the reasons for this: the entire Asia does not publish half as much material as America alone does each year. Asian researchers are therefore wily-nily dependent on Western writers for their facts on international events.

Nevertheless, it is an excellent book, particularly relevant because it is written by an Asian.

This book has also been published in India by Rupa & Co., Delhi.

This book is brilliant!

The method of walking through the National Gallery of Art and through the streets of our nation's capitol has brought both into our home at a level that can be shared with my children.

As I have just written in my 5-star review of "You Can't Take a Balloon to The Metropolitan Museum,": The really good news is that the Preiss sisters HAVE written another book and are working on a third. The second in this series, You Can't Take a Balloon to The National Gallery, is also fabulous. In fact, it is so good that, up until 2 weeks ago, my 3 year old would point out about twice a week that we had not been to the "Natural Gallery" when I asked her what we should do that day.

The only thing that changed since then is that I took her and her 1 year old sister to Washington last week, using the book as a guide book. If you think you like these books now, try using them as a template for a trip with your children! WOW!!!!!! What a wonderful way to get them ready for a trip and what a wonderful thing to carry the book with you, comparing what you are seeing to what you have read!!!! How great to go back to the hotel and see what you have seen and are going to see!!!! How great to get home and have an instant scrap book!!!!

With this experience behind us, we also can't wait until next Spring when You Can't Take a Balloon to The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is scheduled to come out!

A profound success on many fronts. I'm totally taken by its creativity, cleverness, and messages. This book has adventure, drama, historical details -- I love the "Faces from History" part (plus the learning within them), as offered ever so playfully! At the same time, "You Can't Take A Balloon..." is warm and filled with great joy. If all learning was presented so refreshingly, we'd have a different world!

Grandma is taking a little girl and her brother to the National Gallery of Art. As they walk in, the little girl hands her balloon to a nice photographer to hold for her, since balloons are not allowed inside. But as the three begin their tour of the gallery, the balloon comes loose and sails away..... You Can't Take a Balloon Into the National Gallery is a creative and inventive picture book that will entrance and mesmerize youngsters of all ages with its busy, expressive artwork, great attention to detail and famous Americans hidden in the pictures. The Preiss sister's marvelous and clever pen and ink illustrations, with bright color used only to highlight the chaos of the balloon's trip, parallels the tour inside the gallery, as life imitates art and art imitates life. This book includes a wonderfully detailed map of the balloon's route through D.C. and an answer key full of fun facts and historical notes for their hidden faces, at the end. It's impossible to open this book without finding something new and exciting that you've never seen before. For hours of fun, You Can't Take a Balloon Into the National Gallery is an adventure that will delight and amuse everyone in the family.

I thought this book was very good for children. It gave an overview of the important facts about his life and gave excellent illustrations to accompany the text.

Although I expected this book to be well over the head of my 5-year-old son, he loved it. It was an interesting book that held his attention on its own merits. The pictures, although not as many as he was used to, helped the story along. But when he learned that this was a book about a real person, someone he had heard of, he was thrilled. He's asked me to get him more books about real people. I definitely will.

I thought this book would be well over the head of my five-year-old son; it has more words on each page than he's used to (because it is geared for the young reader). This book is so well written that it kept his attention throughout. And when he realized that this was someone he had heard of, he was hooked. Now he wants to know about all the presidents. (He doesn't realize how many of them there are!)

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to start their child down the path of enjoying history.

If you love your young children who are just learning about history, you owe it to yourself and to them to rush and press the order button for this classic kids' book. Lushily and lavishly illustrated, this wonderful tome details the true story of the man who would become the first president of the United States. This book is an excellent start for any young man or woman to get a grip on the early history of our great country. I am choked up as I write these words because I know this incredible book will become an heirloom that I will pass down from generation to generation. This powerful, and moving testiment to the formation of our land will never be forgotten by this impressed reader. It's simply one of the most wonderful books ever written and I thank God for its existence.

This esoteric work is a gem for the history buff as well as for the airship enthusiast. The photos alone make the book worthy enough to justify the effort of cracking open one's wallet. The information on the airships - or should I say "big slow explosive aerial targets" - and the intrepid units that flew them appears to be well-researched. If only all the world's power-hungry aggressors put so much effort into doomed ideas like the airship, we'd live in a more peaceful, albiet smokier, world.

In the 1996 hit film 'Independance Day' the terrified populance of the worlds major cities cringe as huge ships of an invading force hover overhead. While that movie was simply escapist entertainment, something strikingly similar happened (over London, at least) during World War I; Germany tried to force England into submision using that uniquely German invention, the Zeppelin. 'The Zeppelin in Combat' by Douglas H. Robinson, is regarded as the standard reference on this particular facet of WWI. The book documents the trials, tribulations, and tragedies of the attempt to make the airship into a viable weapon. Covered is the role of the airship in the famous Naval battle of Jutland, an extraordinary attempt to supply troops in Central Africa via airship, and several vivid accounts of British pilots that successfully shot down Zeppelins. Other topics include the story of one crew downed in the north sea, who's eventual fate was revealed by a note washed ashore in a bottle. Another crew became the only hostile forces to march over English soil during either world war when they were forced down during a raid (although not too terribly hostile, they were captured en masse by a lone policeman on a bicycle). Personalities include Hienrich Mathy, the Red Baron of airships, and Peter Stasser, the Naval leader of airships whose almost religious belief in the airship as a weapon of war lead to his own death in an Zeppelin off the coast of England. This revised edition includes many photos published for the first time. For the serious airship enthusiast, this book provides fascinating reading. One caveat, however; the book is published by Shiffer Military History, and contains numerous typo's (as many Shiffer books do). But all in all, they should be applauded for publishing a book at all on such an arcane subject

Douglas H. Robinson spent a number of years at Friedrichshafen at Zeppelin. This is primary source material for anyone interested in the history of airships. The research in this book is expemplary. The level of detail is fascinating. And it is very well written. Highly recommended!

My wife gave me this book for Christmas a couple years ago, and I cannot say enough good things about it. This is a subject I had a lot of passion for, and I could not be more pleased with this volume. There is a TON of information crammed into this 400+ page big book.

Let me break down the highlights:

1. PICTURES: The book goes out of its way to show you as many pictures as possible of these German WWI airships and their crews and sheds. It is simply fascinating to watch the development of airships throughout the war (as the pre-War DELAG designs give way to more modern rudders and shapes...to the height-climbers painted black on the underbelly to confuse anti-aircraft fire). There are many many good sized pictures.

2. AIRSHIP RAID REPORTS: This feature just stuns me. Every single raid is documented in chart form, complete with which Zeppelins participated in the raid, take-off and landing times, distance ship travelled, average speed, number of crew, fuel use, oil used, hydrogen used, and (onimously) whether it returned to Germany safely or not.

3. HISTORY: 19 of the 24 Chapters are devoted to the WWI history of German combat airships. One warning: the commentary is slightly dry. You have to be pretty interested in the subject to get into the storyline. The book has depth, and will reward the studious reader. This is nearly primary-source information.

4. AIRSHIP HEROES: Peter Strasser (Naval Head of German WWI Airship Division) and Heinrich Mathy (one of the more successful airship captains) are quite prominent. There are stories of many other airshipmen as well. The personal aspect is a huge strength of this book.

5. OTHER AIRSHIPS: Also covered are not just Zeppelins, but Schutte-Lanz airships, which were rigids with wooden frames (verses aluminum in Zeppelins). Peter Strasser was not a big fan of these "glue potters" as he called them.

WARNING: This is a fairly technical book. If you want an airship book for more casual reading, check out "The Hindenburg - Illustrated History" by Rick Archbold. It is much lighter, but not nearly as detailed on this era of airships.

Has excellent photos, maps, directions and places that I was not able to find on other books for this part of the state.

We've been exploring this area for 20 yrs, but this book has led us to some new places. Directions and descriptions are very good. So far, Dusty Lake is my favorite- see it online.

This is an invaluable guide to discovering the region of Central Washington State-filled with maps, photographs, and historical lore, including information on geology, natural wonders, and the trails themselves, presented in detail and with mileage and elevations.
Central Washington is a vast, rocky, and dry steppe; a relatively uninhabited area in which the region's prehistory is readily apparent. Hikers will find the sun and varied landscape, holding a surprise of grasslands, mountains, caves, and ancient dry rivers, as well as a rich collection of plants, birds, and animals.

Some of my favourite hikes:
Swale Canyon-moderate
Dalles Mountain Ranch-moderate
Tucannon River-moderate
Hardy Canyon-moderate
Crab Creek Trails-moderate

The idea of life as a journey has been always a fascinating concept.....after all being at crossroads of life forces you to make choices in your life...sometimes good...sometimes bad... But this book which explores the American journey with such intensity gives also life journey its special meaning. It made me realise that our journey continuously imposes on us this tough dilemma of where you are heading in your life or where your life is heading you....

If we are the cities and cities are us - the roads to our cities and their streets become borderless and paved with the power of human dreams and desires, connecting us with each other in the search for the ultimate meaning for our lives - our freedom in making choices in our journey for better life...

"All Roads Lead to the American City" certainly deserves its special place ...and not only because of its relevance to American studies - but also because of its contribution to human journey...no matter where you are....and where you are heading in your life.

The exhilarating journey of the United States on the road crisscrossing the heart of the city to the suburban outskirt can now be fully experienced in Peter Swirski's recent work -- All Roads Lead to the American City. Bringing together five inter-linking and inter-cultural essays by scholars from different disciplines, Swirski has once again triumphed over an indispensable read for all walks of life. The collection starts with Priscilla Roberts' detailed account of the socio-historical and political factors that contribute to what she terms a "perennial ambivalence" of the Americans and the city. This is followed by Gina Marchetti who in chapter two illustrates the Asian American search of identity in the land of plenty by examining Renee Tajima-Peñas documentary My America... or, Honk if You Love Buddha (1997). The central chapter written by Swirski himself brings the readers to the mean street of the exciting hardboiled era and the hustle-bustle of today's high-rise through Ed McBain's police procedurals, which vividly personify the city as femme-fatale. In chapter four, Earle Waugh explores the road with the notion of betterment initially driven by moral and religious concern, then by that of the state and the public, which reflects "the decay of a corporate manifest destiny" (95-96). Last but not least, William Kyle in the concluding chapter studies the growth of metropolises and the future of urbs Americana by looking at the interplay between the constant peopling, demographic growth and pattern, as well as the socio-political structuring and policies in the nation. As Professor Christine Bold remarks, "This collection of papers contains tons of valuable information and much lively writing. Its strengths are its accesibility, its juxtaposition of materials, and its historical sweep," All Roads is likely to become a core textbook in every classroom where American Studies is taught. Given so much scholarship has been dedicated to globalization leading from the American City, All Roads Lead to the American City is indeed a highly original thesis. With its literary flair as well as its historical and sociological vision, Swirski's collection proves unfailingly to be a rewarding read for just about everyone!

"I think the book is very informative. I have no previous knowledge of American history, and I think the book is very useful for anyone wishing to know more about American history as it provides not only a broad overview, but also details of particular periods. To me, the details keep the book interesting." This is how my first-year Arts student, Karen Chan, at the University of Hong Kong comments on All Roads Lead to the American City, which is currently used as a textbook for the first-year introductory course on American Studies.

As an English teacher at the University of Hong Kong, I have quite a number of Arts students having a genuine interest in American Studies. If you are interested in American Literature, do you think you should only work on disciplinary studies of the subject? Is it adequate to watch some Hollywood movies or read crime novels and say that you have a good mastery of contemporary American culture? Tapping the insights of "the entire spectrum of the humanities and social sciences to evaluate the transformations currently underway" (p.4), any students or knowledge seekers can just follow Swirski's slim single tightly-knitted collection to find the answers as it puts Urbs Americana under the microscope. With this indispensable reader in hand, you can reach for core interdisciplinary analyses a la American Studies.


All Roads Lead to the American City is another magnificent offering from Peter Swirski, who is Associate Professor in American Literature and heads American Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Swirski is an exceptional talented writer who has written nine books in American Literature and Culture and has contributed more than fifty articles in various places. Swirski's works have been highly praised by numerous scholars and literary critics. Once again, All Roads Lead to the American City is an amazing collection that readers should not miss.


"Cities, for the most part, are America", and are "crisscrossed by tendrils of traffic-bearing arteries", writes Swirski (p.1). The metaphors of the road and the city are intensely revealed throughout the whole collection. With important contributors from interdisciplinary areas of American Studies (History, Film, Religion, and Geography, plus Swirski's own chapter on literature of the city), Swirski's collection comprises five intercultural essays with rich and lively content about American culture. Taken as a whole, readers will first follow the steps of a historian, Priscilla Roberts, to explore the socio-historical and political factors that contribute to the `perennial amibvalence' of the rise of cities and urban culture in America. Next comes a further elaboration of the metaphor of the road by a film scholar, Gina Marchetti, who uses works of a popular `road movie' filmmaker, Renee TajimaPeñas, to portray a personal search of identity through the eyes of an Asian American. Swirski himself, in the central chapter, invites readers to explore the New York City by a vivid and fascinating discussion of Ed McBain's police procedurals to argue for the crucial role of crime literature in "nobrow aesthetics", as Swirski calls it. The last two chapters are a literary-cultural examination of the dreams about the America's literature of the road by a literary and religious comparativist, Earle Waugh, and a vivid insight into the latest development of Urbs Americana from William John Kyle.

As the guests complimented in the Book Launch at the University of Hong Kong, All Roads Lead to the American City has the potential of becoming a great and influential textbook for any students, teachers, or general knowledge seekers. Its impact should not be underestimated.

I picked this book up at the urging of a friend because she said it reminded her of Willa Cather's "My Antonia," and I consider that as beautiful a story as ever was written. Mr. Doherty, it seems, has taken on the task of transferring an oral history to written, and does it quite well - I could almost see the author's twinkling eyes, as if he were sitting at table regaling us alone. And even though most of the story lines were crass, the humor obvious, and the desire to please as wide open as a puppy's face, I couldn't help but be drawn in. Its retrospective telling, and simple eloquent style produce a story above its subject matter. After reading "The Ambiguity of Remorse" I wondered what small part of my life would be worth chronicling, and then realized, it all is.

I was lent a copy of this book from a member of Robert Doherty's family. I felt pressured to read it quickly because of others, anxiously awaiting their turn. I read it in one day and got lost in old America. The humanity, with it's grifts and postulations, seems so familiar but the setting and the modes of living are charmingly historical. I enjoyed the study of how influential the place and the time were in determining the mentality of the people in the story. The mountain and it's valley provided delightful imagery to accompany great tales and parables.The author is clever and reveals a refreshingly sinister sense of humor. I highly recomend this book. I'm purchasing my own copy and one for my mother.

I read The Ambiguity of Remorse with considerable pleasure. These are delightful, evocative tales, that allowed me to live for a while within a time that may now be gone from the world. Robert Doherty has made me a gift of Homer Eklund's boyhood town in the Washington State of the Thirties, and has let me share the lives of the people who inhabit it. The stories are funny and painful and real. Like life. I recommend it.

This collection of poems crept under my skin and has stayed there. Much of American Boy is about women---as mothers, as lovers, as the poet's source of pain, passion and inspiration. It is feelings as women long for them to be expressed. The images are haunting and lovely. Because of the format of the collection, the reader experiences the poet's journey through childhood, relationships, and ultimately, gentle forgiveness. After reading and re-reading, I'm recalling verses and lines of poetry that I'd assumed were forgotten. American Boy is an important experience that sticks with you.

This collection of poems crept under my skin and has stayed there. Much of American Boy is about women---as mothers, as lovers, as the poet's source of pain, passion and inspiration. It is feelings as women long for them to be expressed. The images are haunting and lovely. Because of the format of the collection, the reader experiences the poet's journey through childhood, relationships, and ultimately, gentle forgiveness. After reading and re-reading, I'm recalling verses and lines of poetry that I'd assumed were forgotten. American Boy is an important experience that sticks with you.

Smith has given me more than enough to return to time and again in order to "remember" my own history as an "american boy" growing up. My favorite poem in the collection is "Druid Hill, 1969". In it Smith's language and imagery run at a pace that is at once fluid and choppy, evoking what is the poem's key image: that of a running reel to reel film projector "that Dad won in an Esso sales contest" and that will forever replay fading home movies. This poem has the feel of being a surprise, even to its author--it feels as if it were born whole and perfect, pen never leaving the page until the film had run its course.

This was an enjoyable story set in a small farming town in Washington during World War II. There was a bit of a mystery, but not much action. This is more of a family/friendship story with a historical setting. It was a very good book, although less based in action then some of the other American Diaries.

I think this was a good book. I love historical fiction books and the American Diarie series is my fav. Josie is a cool character and her brother seems sweet. If you like fiction books about WW2 or the American Diaries you'll love this book.

Josie Poe lives during World War Two in a town called Palouse, Washington. She lives with her Mama, her Daddy, and her brother Tom. Everyone in town has a loved one fighting over in the Pacific or in Europe. Except the Poe family. So Josie is ashamed of her brother.Tom was acting really weird lately, so Josie wants to think of a good project for the war effort. Then, a robbery happens that involves Tom. Josie has to find out the truth about her older brother. But will the truth change her relationship with him forever? Find out and read this book!

In the 1930s Greenwich Village, already mythic as the American bohemia, was a disappointment to the visiting French architect, Le Corbusier. He found the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan and mid-town, "mystically alluring", but the Village, which stood between these two sites of modernity, failed to measure up. In his later book, When the Cathedrals Were White (1947), he described it as "an urban no man's land made up of miserable low buildings and poor streets of dirty red brick". By contrast-and this contrasting story is the one that Luther S. Harris tells in Around Washington Square-Henry James, in his famous account of his return to the United States in 1904, celebrated the Village. He regretted the skyscrapers that "so cruelly over-topped" his beloved Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, and he found the fashionable but bland Upper East Side no more congenial. In Greenwich Village, however, he found solace. "This portion of New York", he wrote, impresses many as "the most delectable."
"The village has a kind of established repose which is rare in other quarters of a long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare, the look of having had something of a social history." James has it right and so does Harris. The Village is the northernmost point of the old medieval Street pattern of colonial New York, and it marks the beginning of the modem grid. That doubled physical character is perhaps an apt symbol of the combination of historical presences and avant-garde creativity that has marked the cultural life of this part of the city.
Harris appropriately begins his story with the creation of Washington Square and goes beyond the usual accounts. He emphasizes the complexity of its birth, revealing that its creation required a modification to the recently established 1811 grid plan. That posed a political problem that was managed with patience, persistence, and astuteness by the then Mayor, Philip Hone, a merchant, one of New York's two great nineteenth-century diarists, and the father of the square. By starting at that point, however. Harris omits the separate history of Greenwich, from which the mixed-up street pattern of the West Village derives, and he neglects a longer and important social history that played itself out a couple of blocks from the square. South and west of the square was Manhattan's longest-established African American neighborhood; it dated from the seventeenth century, having been enabled by the Dutch, who allowed slaves to buy land there and use their income from that land to purchase their own freedom. The British authorities were less accommodating to the community, but it persisted into the nineteenth century until the infamous Civil War Draft Riots, when it was devastated by a series of savage attacks on blacks.
He subjects many of the myths of the Village to the test of documentation, sometimes enriching the myth, sometimes undercutting it. While most urban studies of this genre tend to repeat each other, with no one seeking solid evidence for the well-cultivated memories of the place, Harris has dug deep into the holdings of the Municipal Reference Library and Archives, into newspapers and city directories, and, with special success, the visual record of the neighborhood. The book is subtitled An illustrated History of Greenwich Village, and that it is indeed. It has over 200 illustrations, and a very high proportion of them are uncommon, not the usual suspects which-like the myths-get reused from one history to the next.
If Harris offers no thesis, he does have a point to make. Although Manhattan is marked by constant change or, as one historian recently it, "creative destruction", there is remarkable continuity in the Village. Even with the recent intrusion of Starbucks, book- and drugstore chains, and overbearing buildings recently erected on the square by New York University, the neighborhood's appeal to creative people persists, particularly creative people in the arts literature. His point is made by the multiplicity of individuals who populate his history from Whitman, Melville, Poe, and Anne Lynch's salon in the middle of the nineteenth century up until the present. These individuals-some well remembered, others less so-have provided a crucial density to the world of culture-making.
One cannot begin to summarize the number of connections made by Harris, but the entangled associations of artists and intellectuals with groups and places that he elaborates reveal how the Village works. Harris points to the allure of the history of the place and its inhabitants. The most ambitious and talented pursue the challenge and the glory of association with the ghosts of giants. But part of what is unique about the Village are its many physical and cultural nooks and crannies. Harris's strategy of combining an account of the architecture the physical layout of the Village with the history of its literary and artistic figures becomes an explanation. The area feeds on the power and energy of New York, but it provides space-a necessary space-for invention of self well as art.
Still, the maintenance of the Village has required vigilance. Le Corbusier's views were not unique, and Robert Moses, the power planner who reshaped New York during the middle third of the twentieth century, saw little to save around Washington Square. His plan to run expressways through the park and SoHo, just south of the Village, threatened both the history and the social texture of the neighborhood. One Village mother, worried that her child's swings in Washington Square Park were at risk, took up her pen. The result, writes Harris, was not only a successful political mobilization that stopped Moses, but also The Death and Life of American Cities (1961), perhaps the most influential book on cities, planning, and architecture to be published in the twentieth century.

Created by the rich and merchant class as an escape from the recurring ravages of yellow fever and cholera, Greenwich Village was, essentially, never really mapped out; never really settled in accordance to any public plan. Perhaps this haphazard beginning is what gave the area its combined refined yet anarchic flavor that exists until this day.

Luther Harris' book, "Around Washington Square: An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village" is an excellent introduction to the history, myths, lies, and unknown truths about this magnet for the students, the homeless, the artists, and the real estate agents who each value Greenwich Village for their own reasons. The text is very informative, and the illustrations are lush and generous. Broken down into easy-to-handle sections, Harris nonetheless is comprehensive. (He apologies to his readers if any particular individual, group, or building was omitted but he needn't have: just about all the bases were covered.) This is an exhaustive and wonderful book.

It is clear that years of devoted and painstaking research went into the writing of this book. One is given a strong idea of how the neighborhood has evolved as well as the society and mores of its inhabitants over several centuries. The book is well illustrated and there are many images that I have never seen elsewhere.