Almost Home America's Love-Hate Relationship With Community

"David L. Kirp aims to put the platitudes and hand-wringing aside. A professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, in ALMOST HOME he avoids any grand notion about the benefits or drawbacks of the concept. Instead, he offers 13 distinct stories about quite distinct types of American communities -- from wealthy suburban homeowners to working-class college students to East Harlem children and their teachers to hemophiliacs and beyond. Unfortunately, Kirp's grab bag does little to elucidate the term or to enhance its utility either for explaining contemporary conflicts or resolving them. Taken together, the pieces, most previously published in magazines like The Atlantic Monthly and Lingua Franca, fail to yield any insight more profound than 'one of the tasks of community is setting boundaries,' some of which nurture their members, others of which stifle them. But Kirp refuses to indulge in social sermons, and his empathetic reporting often mitigates his lack of big ideas or original ones. two of the more provocative stories are about neighbors whose sense of community failed them when they needed it most."Kirp, David L. is the author of 'Almost Home America's Love-Hate Relationship With Community' with ISBN 9780691095172 and ISBN 0691095175.