Jane Jacobs

August 15, 2023
Jane Jacobs fought for livable communities. New York City-based neighborhood organizer, urban visionary, and Vietnam War protester: Jacobs wore a lot of hats as a "public intellectual" in the mid-20th century, but she is perhaps best known today for opposing "slum clearance" and supporting neighborhoods. Pitts' biography is smoothly written and engaging. She highlights Jacobs' major campaigns and the strategies she promoted. She makes clear both the power of those Jacobs fought against (especially classist and racist developer Robert Moses) and the effectiveness of less powerful but determined people who banded together. The author occasionally uses invented dialogue or adapted quotations to smooth the storytelling in this conversational work that frequently addresses readers directly. Beginning with Jacobs' Pennsylvania childhood in a "typical American upper-middle-class white Protestant suburban family in the 1920s," it traces many of her remarkable achievements but notably is not uncritically laudatory. For example, Pitts describes Jacobs' initial resistance to acknowledging the impact of racism, rejecting her editor's request that she consider the role of race on Black city residents in her seminal 1961 publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities--although some years later, she did change her mind. Occasional black-and-white photos supplement the text; a greater number would have helped readers better envision many of the concepts and locations introduced. Overall, however, this is an engaging work that places a significant figure in historical context. An accessible introduction to a 20th-century icon. (author's note, resources, notes, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 12-16)

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September 15, 2023
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Here is an engaging and lively biography of icon Jane Jacobs, a journalist and community activist for city planning and renewal, who stopped legendary urban planner Robert Moses from building a number of NYC construction projects that would have destroyed communities. Born in 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Jacobs was a rebel from a young age who lived for most of her adult life in the West Village. In this text, her biographer is aware of her flaws: Jacobs' best-known book, the influential 1961 Death and Life of Great American Cities, made no mention of housing inequities and the redlining that many people of color faced due to the existing systemic racial discrimination, a fact that Pitts points to as a valid criticism. Jacobs also believed that communities of people "created a sense of shared safety," but her privilege as a white woman blinded her to the systemic racism of the time. Still, she was widely impactful; she was arrested several times, the second time for allegedly inciting a riot at a public hearing. Pitts occasionally addresses readers directly in the text, which includes black-and-white photographs and uses invented dialogue (in italics) at times to move the narrative along. Jacobs was a remarkable woman, and her advocacy for community action and citizen participation is more valid today than ever. It's a view that will resonate with teen readers.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.