Squaring Off

The New American City

Suleiman Osman on Brooklyn’s Post-World War II Gentrification

January 18, 2012

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to George Washington University urban historian Suleiman Osman, author of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York.

Osman’s history of “Brownstone Brooklyn” chronicles the transformation of blighted industrial neighborhoods into middle-class bastions of a mid-20th-century American Dream. He argues that the gentrification movement was one of the most important developments in modern urban history—changing cities on the ground and in our collective imagination. …

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Everything in Moderation, Except Moderation

Economist Robert Cherry Argues for a Third Way

On January 9, 2012

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Brooklyn College economist Robert Cherry, co-author of Moving Working Families Forward: Third Way Policies That Can Work.

Cherry and co-author Robert Lerman argue that “the Third Way”—an intermediate position between Republicans and Democrats—holds the answer to a lot of America’s political dysfunction. Based on studies as well as conversations with working-class families, they propose policies that are not hemmed in by ideology but propelled by pragmatism.…

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Democratizing Discovery

Michael Nielsen on the Open Science Revolution

On January 4, 2012

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to historian Michael Nielsen, author of Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science.

Science has traditionally been a field of competition and secrecy, where research is guarded from rivals at all costs. But the Internet is revolutionizing the process by which discoveries are made. Nielsen explores this transformation and makes the case for why it will benefit all of us. …

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How the West Won

Niall Ferguson Explains the Rise and Fall of Civilization as We Know It

On December 28, 2011

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to historian Niall Ferguson, author of Civilization: The West and the Rest.

Ferguson tackles the modest topic of “Civilization” over the past five centuries, positing that there were six “killer apps” that allowed “the West” to overtake “the Rest”—competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism, and a certain work ethic. But these apps are also why the days of Western predominance are numbered: the Rest have downloaded these apps, while the West has lost faith in its own power. …

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Street Vendors to the Rescue

Robert Neuwirth Argues for the Benefits of an Informal Economy

On December 19, 2011

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to journalist Robert Neuwirth, author of Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy. …

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Articles

Feuilleton
Friday, December 3, 2010
How One Family Created Chinese America
Zócalo

The Lucky Ones, by Mae Ngai The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America by Mae Ngai Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.

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