The Intellectual Versus The City

AS CITIZENS OF A HISTORICALLY FRONTIER LAND, AMERICANS HAVE AN INHERENT DISTRUST OF THE CONFINEMENTS AND COMPLEXITIES OF THE CITY. But this ingrained romanticism about the natural life—the authors insist—does not fully explain American anti-urbanism. They point out that not only men like Emerson and Melville, but cosmopolitan figures such as Henry James, John Dewey and Theodore Dreiser have considered the American city a sinister place. The great architect Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to demolish t