bluestocking reviewed Palaces for the people by Eric Klinenberg
2.5/5 - It has its moments but mostly feels shallow and dated
3 stars
Parts of this were interesting and worthwhile. I appreciated the focus on specific studies and examples of positive changes that have been made (and are still being made!) toward the beginning of the book, and the historical and cultural context discussing why some cultures and locations have robust third places and why others don't in the middle of the book.
I was really put off at various points by the lack of depth in the author's analysis, however. Particularly at the end when he discussed the "Polis Stations," I found myself yelling "PLEASE read Angela Davis or ANYTHING about prison abolition!!" at the audiobook as it played. I feel like the book suffers from having been published in 2019, and in many ways it feels quite dated just six years later. The bits about "reaching across the aisle" feel trite and a little nauseating in April 2025. And, as someone …
Parts of this were interesting and worthwhile. I appreciated the focus on specific studies and examples of positive changes that have been made (and are still being made!) toward the beginning of the book, and the historical and cultural context discussing why some cultures and locations have robust third places and why others don't in the middle of the book.
I was really put off at various points by the lack of depth in the author's analysis, however. Particularly at the end when he discussed the "Polis Stations," I found myself yelling "PLEASE read Angela Davis or ANYTHING about prison abolition!!" at the audiobook as it played. I feel like the book suffers from having been published in 2019, and in many ways it feels quite dated just six years later. The bits about "reaching across the aisle" feel trite and a little nauseating in April 2025. And, as someone who is from and still lives in the Bay Area, much of the authors' final chapters made me roll my eyes. His criticisms of various tech corps and the billionaires who built their wealth from them are incredibly mild, and frankly read like reputation laundering (and I would've said the same had I read the book in 2019, because all the same people still sucked pondwater then and we'd all had years to recognize it by that point) and also tainted by a misguided belief that tech barons and megacorps are telling the truth when they say they want to do any kind of good in the world and not just extract every ounce of value they can. Capitalism and capitalists might be bad and destroying social cohesion actually!!
Basically: there are some nuggets in this that made it feel worthwhile for me to read, if only to give me a jumping off point to dive into the work of the researchers the author cites, but altogether the analysis felt shallow and at many stages like it missed the forest for the trees.
