"Altogether magnificent . . . Probably no single thinker has done more in the last fifty years to transform our ideas about the nature of urban life." –Chicago Tribune
"[With] piercing analysis, crystalline prose and [a] finely-honed sense of morality, Jacobs covers an amazing amount of ground." –Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Superb . . . Cobbling together a little urban anthropology, a little economic history, and a vast store of highly nuanced personal observations . . . Jacobs is an indispensable provocateur." –Village Voice Literary Supplement