In this eye-opening work of economic theory, Jane Jacobs argues that it is cities–not nations–that are the drivers of wealth. Challenging centuries of economic orthodoxy, in Cities and the Wealth of Nations the beloved author contends that healthy cities are constantly evolving to replace imported goods with locally produced alternatives, spurring a cycle of vibrant economic growth. Intelligently argued and drawing on examples from around the world and across the ages, here Jacobs radically changes the way we view our cities–and our entire economy.

A dark age is a culture’s dead end. In North America, for example, we live in a virtual graveyard of lost and destroyed aboriginal cultures. In this powerful and provocative book, renowned author Jane Jacobs argues convincingly that we face the coming of our own dark age.

Throughout history, there have been many more dark ages than the one that occurred between the fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the Renaissance. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors went from hunter-gatherers to farmers and, along the way, lost almost all memory of what existed before. Now we stand at another monumental crossroads, as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future. How do we make this shift without losing the culture we hold dear–and without falling behind other nations that successfully master the transition?

First we must concede that things are awry. Jacobs identifies five central pillars of our society that show serious signs of decay: community and family; higher education; science and technology; governmental representation; and self-regulation of the learned professions. These are the elements we depend on to stand firm–but Jacobs maintains that they are in the process of becoming irrelevant. If that happens, we will no longer recognize ourselves.

The good news is that the downward movement can be reversed. Japan avoided cultural defeat by retaining a strong hold on history and preservation during war, besiegement, and occupation. Ireland nearly lost all native language during the devastations of famine and colonialism, but managed to renew its culture through the steadfast determination of its citizens. Jacobs assures us that the same can happen here–if only we recognize the signs of decline in time.

Dark Age Ahead is not only the crowning achievement of Jane Jacobs’s career, but one of the most important works of our time. It is a warning that, if heeded, could save our very way of life.

With intelligence and clarity of observation, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities addresses the moral values that underpin working life.

In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs identifies two distinct moral syndromes–one governing commerce, the other politics–and explores what happens when these two syndromes collide. She looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, government’s overextended subsidies to agriculture, and transit police who abuse the system the are supposed to enforce, and asks us to consider instances in which snobbery is a virtue and industry a vice. In this work of profound insight and elegance, Jacobs gives us a new way of seeing all our public transactions and encourages us towards the best use of our natural inclinations.

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as “perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning….[It] can also be seen in a much larger context.  It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book’s arguments.”  Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners.  Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs’s small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities.  It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable.  The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition.

In this book, Jane Jacobs, building on the work of her debut, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, investigates the delicate way cities balance the interplay between the domestic production of goods and the ever-changing tide of imports. Using case studies of developing cities in the ancient, pre-agricultural world, and contemporary cities on the decline, like the financially irresponsible New York City of the mid-sixties, Jacobs identifies the main drivers of urban prosperity and growth, often via counterintuitive and revelatory lessons.

Decades after The Death and Life of Great American Cities forever changed the field of urban studies, Jane Jacobs–one of the few contemporary thinkers whose works will remain in print for generations–brought us a modern classic on economies and ecology. Original and eloquent, this book looks at the connection between the economy and nature, arguing that the principles of development, common to both systems, are the proper subject of economic study.

The Nature of Economies is written in the form of a Platonic dialogue, a conversation over coffee among five contemporary New Yorkers. The question they discuss is: Does economic life obey the same rules as those governing the systems in nature? For example, can the way fields and forests maximize their intakes and uses of sunlight teach us something about how economies expand wealth and jobs and can do this in environmentally beneficial ways? The underlying question is both simple and profound, and the answers that emerge will shape the way people think about how economies really work.

The New York Times described Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities as “first of all a work of literature.” The accessibility of her prose–The New Criterion called it “majestic”–stands as Jacobs’s hallmark. She is the rarest of analytic thinkers, both an economic visionary and an artist. Examining complex systems with the wit, style, and clear eye of the masterly essayist, in The Nature of Economies Jacobs accomplishes the near impossible: She fundamentally challenges some of the established principles of economics while writing in a style that enthralls the general reader.