Ryan Holiday: This is one of the most important books about cities ever written. It's what helps you understand why cities work, why they don't work, what makes a neighborhood, what destroys neighborhoods and how almost everything city planners and governments think matters, doesn't. Seth Roberts is probably the biggest Jane Jacobs fan there is. He's what she calls an insider-outsider (insider in terms of understanding, outsider in terms of career) She was an activist and a student who understood the system but wasn't wedded to it or dependent on it for a living. It was this unique position that gave her the freedom and the perspective to explain the concept of American cities (and what's killing them) in a way that no one had ever done before. I also think that a lot of Jacobs' ideas about diversity, mixed uses, isolation, wealth and government can be applied to other parts of our lives. The way she gets to the core of neighborhood, passing up the easy or obvious signs that others are mistakenly distracted with, is impressive. There is a great Malcolm Gladwell article where he tries to use some of her ideas to dissect office culture--it's a good start and example about other canvases for her ideas.

Every summer for more than a century, the all-male Bohemian Club of San Francisco has led a retreat into a redwood forest 70 miles north of the city, four and a quarter square miles of rugged, majestic terrain that members consider sacred. The religion they consecrate is right-wing, laissez-faire and quintessentially western, with some Druid tree worship thrown in for fun. The often bizarre rites have elevated what was once a provincial club for San Franciscans embarrassed by the rude manners of the Wild West into the most exclusive club in the United States, with 2,300 members drawn from the whole of the American establishment and a waiting list 33 years long.

Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

For the fractious Tea Party movement, Beck—a former drive-time radio jockey, a recovering alcoholic, and a Mormon convert—has emerged as both a unifying figure and an intellectual guide. One opinion poll, released in July by Democracy Corps, showed that he is “the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters,” seen not merely as an entertainer, like Rush Limbaugh, but as an “educator.” And in the past few months Beck has established his own institute of learning: the online, for-profit Beck University. Enrollees can take courses like Faith 102, which contends with “revisionists and secular progressives” about the separation of church and state; Hope 102, an attack on the activist federal government; and the combined Charity 101/102/103, a highly restrictive interpretation of rights, federalism, and the division of powers.

Washington moves at the pace of Brezhnev's Soviet Union. It needs to be more like Silicon Valley if it is to compete with China

James Truslow Adams (October 18, 1878 – May 18, 1949) was an American writer and historian. He was not related to the famous Adams family (though he wrote a book about the family in 1930). He was not an academic, but a freelance author who helped to popularize the latest scholarship about American history, especially New England. and his three volume history of New England is well regarded by scholars.

The American Dream, sometimes in the phrase "Chasing the American Dream," is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the American Dream, first expressed by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.[1] The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the second sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence which states that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."[2]

"A lavishly entertaining account of a family at war with itself, and a brilliant dissection of the dissatisfactions and disappointments of contemporary American life... Compelling...Freedom, though frequently funny, is ultimately tender: its emotional currency is both the pain and the pleasure that that word implies . . . That it also grapples with a fundamental dilemma of modern middle-class America—namely: Is it really still OK to spend your life asserting your unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, when the rest of the world is in such a state?. . . The reason to celebrate him is not that he is doing something new but that he is doing something old, presumed dead—and doing it brilliantly. Freedom bids for a place alongside the great achievements of his predecessors, not his contemporaries; it belongs on the same shelf as John Updike’s Rabbit, Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. It is the first Great American Novel of the post-Obama era."

The reality is that conservative thinking provides a deep well of arguments for protecting the environment and tackling climate change. I would argue the long political and philosophical heritage of environmentalism is in essence, conservative rather than radical. If the action needed to enhance the security of our own and future generations seems radical, that is merely a reflection of the extent to which we have collectively lost touch with the conservative tradition.

Brief reflections on contemporary American culture cover celebrity, privilege, crime, drugs, teen-age alcoholism, race relations, politics, and the media.

Ryan Holiday: In 1920 Upton Sinclair self-published arguably the first ever structural criticism of the corrupt and broken press system in America. Not only did he self-publish it but he refused to copyright it, hoping to pass through the complete media blacklist a book like this faced. It's not only fascinating but a timeless perspective. Sinclair deeply understood the economic incentives of early 20th century journalism and thus could predict and analyze the manipulative effect it had on The Truth. Today, those incentives and pressures are different but they warp our information in a similar way. In almost every substantial charge he leveled against the yellow press, you could, today, sub in blogs and the cable news cycle and be even more correct. In fact, the reason that most newspapers could escape this criticism is that over the last 50 years they have instituted many of the important changes he asked for.

A proper pumpkin pie requires a proper cooking pumpkin – if you can't find one, use a butternut squash instead – crisp, flaky pastry, and the light creaminess of evaporated milk. All other flavours are up to you, as long as you remember to give thanks as you tuck in.

He is a No 1 bestseller who is also hailed as the foremost literary novelist of his generation. Nine years after the phenomenal success of The Corrections, has Jonathan Franzen pulled off the same feat with his new novel?

Burgers may be fast food, but they're also a craft. There are clubs devoted to the cult of the perfect patty, endless articles devoted to the 20 examples you must "try before you die" (if they don't finish you off first), and every month, a new, and usually outlandish variation on the theme, from 10oz hunks of foie gras to doughnut buns. But I'm interested in taking the burger back to basics, with a classic beef number suitable for cooking on the barbecue, or a hot griddle pan. 

Almost 80% of New York's energy consumption is through its buildings, mainly in the larger of the leaky older structures. Though politicians have tended to focus on energy consumption by individuals and tried to persuade families to cut their energy use at home, Malkin said the renovation of the Empire State Building would achieve savings in carbon emissions on a similar scale to comparable moves by 40,000 households.

"Listen online to feature-length interviews with the greatest American writers from 1939 to the present."

"With the death of JD Salinger last week, a remarkable era in US literature came to its end. Mark Lawson reflects on the passing of an unrivalled generation."

"Do you remember this photograph? In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001. The story behind it, though, and the search for the man pictured in it, are our most intimate connection to the horror of that day."

"Airport security in America is a sham—“security theater” designed to make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. Smart ones can get through security with fake boarding passes and all manner of prohibited items—as our correspondent did with ease."

"Presidential candidates are calling for tougher labor standards in trade agreements. But can such standards be enforced? Here's what I learned from my old job."

"Barack Obama’s decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932. It brings to a close another conservative era, one that rose amid the ashes of the New Deal coalition in the late sixties, consolidated its power with the election of Ronald Reagan, in 1980, and immolated itself during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression; the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious. But what philosophy of government will characterize it?"

"We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth."