Selected Work

An Ad Hoc Affair

Jane Jacobs's clear-eyed vision of humanity

Originally published February 3, 2017 in The Nation

In 1956, Jane Jacobs was 39 years old, working as a staff writer at Architectural Forum. Her boss, unable to attend a conference at Harvard, asked her to go in his stead and give a talk on land banking.

Review of The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New, by Annie Dillard

Originally published June 6, 2022 in The Nation

For an epoch defined by mass attention-deficit disorder, Annie Dillard would seem to be the perfect antidote. Dillard, the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), is devoted to patience and to presence.

Two Books on the Anthropocene

Originally published November 30, 2015 in Los Angeles Review of Books

THEY WARNED US about this. In California, the future has arrived in the form of desiccated land, 100-degree autumn days, and freakish fires that burned more than 300,000 acres in 2015.

Originally published Fall 2015 in Dissent

On August 12, twenty-one young Americans, led by the organization Our Children’s Trust, filed a lawsuit against the federal government. By now, President Obama is used to getting sued, but these were not his usual adversaries.

Review of 'Giving Up Baby,' by Laury Oaks

Originally published September/October 2015 in Pacific Standard

On Christmas Eve, 2007, a blond woman in her late 30s arrived at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, with a crying newborn in her arms. The woman had given birth alone at home and tied off the umbilical cord with a rubber band.