{"id":5830,"date":"2023-12-31T06:40:37","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T14:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5830"},"modified":"2023-12-31T06:41:07","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T14:41:07","slug":"books-on-cities-malcolm-harris-palo-alto-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5830","title":{"rendered":"Books on Cities: Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1654\" height=\"2560\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Malcom-Harris-Palo-Alto-scaled.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5831\" style=\"width:400px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Malcom-Harris-Palo-Alto-scaled.webp 1654w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Malcom-Harris-Palo-Alto-768x1189.webp 768w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Malcom-Harris-Palo-Alto-992x1536.webp 992w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Malcom-Harris-Palo-Alto-1323x2048.webp 1323w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1654px) 100vw, 1654px\" \/><\/center><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Malcolm Harris&#8217; <em>Palo Alto<\/em> is not exactly a book about Palo Alto. Or rather, you won&#8217;t come away from it having learned as much about Palo Alto as its 720-page bulk might have you imagine. I don&#8217;t mean that as a criticism, since the book has greater ambitions: indeed, its very subtitle promises <em>A History of California, Capitalism, and the World<\/em>, which the text does go on to deliver. If you were just looking to read about Palo Alto, you&#8217;d probably put it down after a couple hundred pages. I myself picked it up expressly to write about as a city book, but despite the square-peg-round-hole category fit, one factor that kept me reading (and taking what came out to nearly 20,000 words of notes) was both my and Harris&#8217; being northern California-born millennial writers with an interest in the course of civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his first book, <em>Kids These Days<\/em>, Harris made a study of our generation and its tendency toward less-than-impressive personal and professional outcomes. I&#8217;ve been aware of him at least since it came out in 2017, when reviews made it sound intriguing if somewhat ideological and hyperbolic. (One oft-quoted line, perhaps taken out of context: &#8220;We become fascists or revolutionaries, one or the other.&#8221;) <em>Palo Alto<\/em>, his third book, was published this past February, but I only became aware of it in the summer, when he drew a wave of attention by tweeting about bananas. &#8220;Pro-growth lefties accuse their opponents of being out of touch with working-class preferences and focused on consumption instead of production but what do they imagine planning support looks like for, say, &#8216;fresh bananas at every American 7\/11&#8217; among the world&#8217;s banana workers?&#8221; he asks at the top of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BigMeanInternet\/status\/1681027552217841664\">the thread in question<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Read the whole thing <a href=\"https:\/\/colinmarshall.substack.com\/p\/malcolm-harris-palo-alto-a-history\">at Substack.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malcolm Harris&#8217; Palo Alto is not exactly a book about Palo Alto. Or rather, you won&#8217;t come away from it having learned as much about Palo Alto as its 720-page bulk might have you imagine. I don&#8217;t mean that as a criticism, since the book has greater ambitions: indeed, its very subtitle promises A History [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5833,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions\/5833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}