"Unplanning is a wonderful read It is beautifully written, it takes up extremely important and timely topics, and it offers a new and concrete approach to democracy and sustainability. I enjoy going back almost at random to read and re-read pages and passages from it. It's very engaging and stimulating - and it should be read by every environmentalist."
- Prof. Charles Derber, author of Greed to Green

The conventional wisdom says that we need strict planning to build walkable neighborhoods around transit stations - even though these neighborhoods are like the streetcar suburbs that...

"Classical Liberalism is a must read. For one thing, readers should not deprive themselves of the pure enjoyment of this engaging and clear-minded narrative of a broad swath of history. For another, anyone concerned about the state of democratic civil society in the West, and worried about its future, cannot afford to neglect this disarming analysis."

- Prof. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Syracuse University

According to the conventional history, liberalism went through two phases, laissez-faire liberalism and modern liberalism.

This book rediscoveers a lost tradition of liberal thought and...

Of the three books said to be by King Solomon, "Ecclesiastes" gave the most trouble to the rabbis who decided, almost two thousand years ago, what to include in the Bible. What could the rabbis make of sayings like:

"There is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?"

Could they admit that Solomon said we should not try too hard to be righteous and wise, because it would make life more difficult?

It is likely that...

The early twentieth century believed that technology would bring a better world. Modernist architects were part of a larger social movement with a vision of a more prosperous high-tech future.

Today, we see that we must make selective use of technology, using technologies that are beneficial and controlling those that are destructive. Beginning in the 1970s, postmodern architects were part of a larger social movement to use technology for human purposes.

But today's avant gardists have rejected this humanist impulse and regressed to the modernist love of technology for its own sake,...

The main tradition of classical philosophy had a clear idea of the good life, based on human flourishing. Modern philosophers rejected this tradition because they believed in the logical principle that we cannot derive ought-statements from is-statements, so it is impossible to base ethics on human nature.

This book shows that this logical principle is false. You can derive ought-statements from teleological is-statements, statements about function, goal, or purpose.

Philosophers rejected classical ethics not because of a logical problem but because they rejected Aristotle's...