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  • Published: 15 February 1994
  • ISBN: 9780679748168
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $35.00

Systems Of Survival



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.

  • Published: 15 February 1994
  • ISBN: 9780679748168
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1916, but lived much of her life in Toronto, Canada. She was the author of The Economy of Cities, The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, and Systems of Survival. She died in 2006.

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