Books

Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. [peer reviewed]

Associate Editor, The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume I: “My People Need Me.” Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2009; “Christian, Who Calls Me Christian, Volume 2, 2012. [peer reviewed]

American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality: Searching for the Higher Self, 1875-1915. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002 (hardcover and paperback). [peer reviewed]

Co-editor with Walter Earl Fluker, A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998; paperback, 1999.

Articles, essays, book chapters, book reviews, reports, and interviews

Co-author, From Transactional to Transformative: The Case for Equity in Gateway City Transit-Oriented Development, MassINC, May 18, 2020.

“A Climate Case for the Industrial Heartland,” The American Prospect, December 12, 2019.

“Land Without Bread,” The Baffler, no. 47, Fall 2019, 72-82.

“Western Mass. “Hilltowns” Look for a Foothold,” Commonwealth Magazine, June 20, 2019.

“Worked Over,” review of Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America, The Baffler, November 27, 2018.

Co-author, The Work of Leisure: Behind the Scenes of the Massachusetts Leisure, Hospitality, and Tourism Industry, prepared by The UMass Donahue Institute Economic and Public Policy Research Group for The Boston Foundation, June 2018.

“The Neighborhood Activist as Prophet, review of Robert Kanigel, Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs, American Prospect (Winter 2017), 107-109.

Co-author, The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2016–The Trouble with Growth: How Unbalanced Economic Expansion Affects Housing, Dukakis Center, November 2016.

Co-author, State of the Built Environment: Greater Boston’s Infrastructure, prepared by the Dukakis Center with A Better City, June 2016.

“When the Steel Mill Gets Replaced by a GOP Megadonor’s Casino,” review of Chloe Taft, From Steel to Slots, In these Times (April 4, 2016).

Co-author, The Critical Importance of Vocational Education in the Commonwealth, prepared by the Dukakis Center, Northeastern University, for the Alliance for Vocational Technical Education, January 2016.

“Richard Florida and the Rise of the Creative Con,” Raritan 35:2 (Fall, 2015), 102-12,

Response to Peter Singer, “The Logic of Effective Altruism,” Boston Review 40: 4 (July-August, 2015).

“Buffalo Exchange: Retrofitting a Rust Belt Capital,” The Baffler #27 (2015), 128-43.

Co-author, The Greater Boston Housing Report Card, 2014-2015: Fixing an Out-of-Sync Housing Market, March 2015

“In-Demand Cities Special Report: Boston,” Architectural Record, October 2014.

“Bulldozing the Humanities,” Baffler blog, August 1, 2014.

Co-author with Joan Fitzgerald and Tracy Corley, “District-Scale Sustainability Scan,” report prepared for the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, July 25, 2014.

“Dispatch from the Narcissism Wars,” Baffler blog, May 14, 2014.

“Fields, Factories, and Workshops: Green Economic Development on the Smaller-Metro Scale,” in Susan Wachter and Kimberly Zeuli (eds.), Revitalizing American Cities. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. [peer-reviewed]

Response to Suzanne Berger, “How Finance Gutted Manufacturing,” Boston Review 39:2 (March-April 2014): 12-29.

“The Minimal Selfie,” In These Times 38:2 (February 2014): 38-39.

“Unreal Cities: Do Smart Automation Projects Have More in Common with Jane Jacobs or Le Courboisier?” review of Anthony M. Townsend, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, The Nation 298:5 (February 3, 2014): 35-37.

“Can Mayors Save the World?” review of Benjamin Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World, In These Times 38:1 (January 2014).

“Hard Times, the Sequel,” review of George Packer, The Unwinding, In These Times 37:9 (September 2013): 38-39.

Co-author with Benjamin Forman, “Reinventing Transit: A Blueprint for Investing in Regional Transportation Authorities for Strong Gateway City Economies,” MassINC Gateway Cities Innovation Institute concept paper (March 2013).

“The Medium Apples,” review of Ben Adler’s review of Alan Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 27 (Winter 2013): 80-86.

“Econ-Geo” [Moretti.Nation. 2012] review of Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs, Nation (December 17, 2012): 43-46.

“How Dense Can You Be?” Zócalo Public Square, April 2012.

Interview with Chris Lehman, author of Rich People Things, Boston Phoenix, November 2, 2010.

“The City’s Limits,” review of David Owen, Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability, Wilson Quarterly 34:1 (Winter 2010): 108-109.

Host, Firedoglake.com Book Salon on David Owen’s Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability, November 21, 2009.

“Market Messiah,” review of Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise, Boston Phoenix 38, (July 2, 2009): 30.

“Urban Outfitters,” review of Gerald Grant, Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh, Book Forum 16 (June 2009): 45.

“Small, Green, and Good: The Role of Neglected Cities in a Sustainable Future” Boston Review 34 (March 2009): 23-27. [Revised and reprinted in James C. Connolly (ed.), After the Factory: Reinventing America’s Industrial Small Cities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010.]

“We of Little Faith,” review of Sharman Apt Russell, Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist, and Phil Zuckerman, Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, Book Forum 15 (Fall 2008): 40.

“The Reckoning,” Boston Review 32 (May 2007): 19-22. [Review essay on “progressive religion” and liberal politics.]

“Mind Bending: Rethinking 9/11” Boston Phoenix 35 (September 8, 2006): News and Features, 1, 16-18.

(With Michael Bronski), “Free At Last: An Interview with Bernard Baran,” Boston Phoenix 35 (July 14, 2006): News and Features, 14-16.

“Social Science,” review of Zadie Smith, On Beauty, Boston Phoenix 34 (September 23, 2005): Arts, 29.

“Hurricane Katrina: Humiliation and Heroism,” Boston Phoenix 34 (September 9, 2005): News and Features, 12.

“Dead Presidents,” review of Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation, Washington Post Book World (April 10, 2005): 12.

“God’s Country,” review of Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Boston Phoenix 33 (July 23, 2004): Arts, 14.

“The Child Buyers,” review of Susan Linn, Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, and Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture, Washington Post Book World (May 23, 2004): 9.

“Sallie Mae Not,” Boston Phoenix 32 (November 28, 2003): News and Features, 1, 14-18.

Untitled review of Louis Menand, American Studies, Boston Review 28 (April/May 2003): 47.

“Against All Odds,” review of Jackson Lears, Something For Nothing: Luck In America, Commonweal 130 (May 9, 2003): 36-37. [behind paywall]

“Making It Last,” review of Stephen Mitchell, Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time, Boston Phoenix 31 (July 26, 2002): Arts, 13.

Recommended Summer Reading, Commonweal 129 (June 14, 2002): 22-23. [behind paywall]

“Give and Take,” review of Mark Dowie, American Foundations: An Investigative History, Boston Phoenix 30 (September 28, 2001): Arts, 14.

“Is Jack A Dull Boy?” review of Etta Kralovec and John Buell, The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning, In These Times 25 (January 22, 2001): 30-31.

“Pig In A Poke?” review of Thomas Frank, One Market, Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy, Boston Phoenix 29 (November 10, 2000): Arts, 16.

“Age of Innocence,” [pdf] review of Jonathan Kozol, Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope, In These Times 24 (August 7, 2000): 31-32.

“Edward Bellamy, the Erosion of Public Life, and the Gnostic Revival,” American Literary History 11 (Winter 1999): 610-41. [peer reviewed, behind paywall]

“Howard Thurman: Working and Waiting,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 28 (Summer 1999): 15. [unavailable online]

“The Politics of Healthy-Mindedness,” [pdf] review of John McKnight, The Careless Society: Community and its Counterfeits and Meta Mendel-Reyes, Reclaiming Democracy: The Sixties in Politics and Memory, In These Times 19 (October 30, 1995): 32-34.