News
Robert Kanigel: Biographer of Scranton Native Is Next Library Lecturer
September 26, 2016Wednesday, October 26th • 7 P.M. • Scranton Cultural Center
Scranton was a thriving capital of the coal industry in those days, but it quickly fell on harder times, and the regular evocation, in her work, of thriving rather than stagnant cities surely echoes her sense of [Scranton’s] rise and fall.
Adam Gopnik, New Yorker Magazine, Sept. 26, 2016
Robert Kanigel’s biography of urban visionary Jane Jacobs, Eyes on the Street,” has been getting great reviews in advance of its release next month by Knopf, but few go into such detail as Gopnik’s New Yorker essay. It’s worth a look.
Born in Scranton in 1916, Jacobs grew up here, graduated from Scranton Central High School and started her career in journalism at the Scranton Tribune. But it was while living in New York City’s Greenwich Village, then threatened by the construction of an expressway through its heart, that Jacobs found her subject.
The result was The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a 1961 book that brought her fame and would change the way we think about urban renewal and development.
Fifty-five years after its publication, the book is still read by those who care about the urban environment. And Jacobs is widely considered one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th Century.
Don’t miss Robert Kanigel lecture about Jane Jacob’s enduring legacy.
Tickets are free and are available online or at any Lackawanna County library.
