William H. Whyte, The Essential William H. Whyte (Fordham University Press, 2000) Also published in paperback simultaneously. Since the publication of his 1956 bestseller, The Organization Man, William H. Whyte has been hailed as a pundit of postwar American culture, and a world-class visionary for shaping cities into human spaces. Critics still argue that Whyte understands and explains the dynamics of American urban life perhaps better than anyone else. This collection, which spans over 30 years of writing from the 1950's to the 1990's, covers everything from the emergence of the suburbs and sprawl to safeguarding public spaces – from the problems of profiling, to the benefits of gentrification. His subversive and sometimes controversial musings have gone on to form the framework for modern planning movements like New Urbanism. Culling essays from Fortune magazine and excerpts from several of Whyte's books, editor Albert LaFarge introduces treatises on the exploding metropolis, the living street, crowding, indoor spaces, blank walls, public plazas, and city centers. The ideas come across as so intuitive and elegantly simple, that modern development's many failures seem that much more inexcusable. But the writing endures as a reminder of human possibility. It showcases Whyte, who died in 1999, as a fervent reformer, as well as a pragmatic thinker. MORE: A Brief Biography of Whyte Some Excerpts of Whyte’s Writings |
|